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MYSTERY MOUNTAIN 























































































































































































































































































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“1 went up alone and made a personal investigation * 














MYSTERY MOUNTAIN 


By 

JAMES CLOYD BOWMAN 

Author of 

Pecos Bill, Tales from a Finnish Tupa, Etc. 


Pictured by 

LUCILLE WALLOWER 



Junior Press Boohj 

ALBERT WHITMAN & CO. 

CHICAGO 

I94O 









Copyright, 1940, by 
ALBERT WHITMAN & COMPANY 


rzi 


M 


1 . 


CVjauj 


Printed in the U.S.A. 


141688 

RECEIVED 

JUN- 61940 

COPY..." 


PICE 



This story was written 
for 

Helen, Ruth, and feanne 









TABLE OF CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Alone in a Pullman. 17 

Uncle Hiram Assists. 26 

Rosemary Arrives . 34 

A Question of Courage. 46 

The Uninvited Guest. 56 

An Evening of Accidents. 65 

The Old Man of the Mountain. 74 

Ghosts or Fairies. 91 

Rosemary Goes Exploring. 99 

Under the Mullen Stalk. 107 

Gifts for Betty. f . 118 

The Clock Strikes Nine. 131 

An Escape at Dawn. 141 

The Mystery Thickens. 152 

The Telegram . 160 

The Iron Ore Dock. 168 

A Circus in the Making. 180 

The Uncertainty of Kites. 189 

Tyne Interrupts . 199 

The Old Man of the Mountain. 209 

The Secret Passageway. 218 























TABLE OF CONTENT S —Continued 


PAGE 

More Exciting News. 228 

The Secret Will Out. 235 

Daddy-Doc Arrives . 248 

The Raid on Mystery Mountain. 254 

The Heart of the Mystery. 262 

Claribel Becomes Claire. 274 

It Ends Happily. 286 

! 









FULL PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS 
COLOR PLATES 

PAGE 

“I went up alone and made a personal 

investigation” .Frontispiece 

Rosemary tugged at his arm. 16 

“It was forty-nine years ago when it all began”. . 77 

The three were delightedly watching it soar. 195 

BLACK AND WHITE PLATES 

“We’re right glad to see you”. 35 

“Do you hear that?” Betty said. 53 

Into this opening Rosemary thrust the box. 109 

“Let me introduce you, Aunt Polly”. 127 

Rosemary lay perfectly still. 147 

Together they slowly climbed upward. 171 

“Won’t you please go, Tyne?”. 205 

Rosemary began to read in a subdued whisper ... 221 
“I absolutely know they’re genuine,” Betty stated. 243 
“You’re going with Betty and me down to 
Aunt Polly’s” . 271 
















Rosemary tugged at his arm 









I. 

ALONE IN A PULLMAN 


1 RAIN for Milwaukee—ee—ee, Green Ba—a—y, 
Menominee—ee—ee, and Marque—e—ette, now read— 
ee—ee, track twenty-two—oo—oo.” The voice of the 
train-caller boomed through the large marble waiting- 
room of the Chicago & Northwestern Railway Station. 

Crowds of women, carrying awkward bundles and 
leading excited children, and men tugging at heavy 
satchels pushed toward the gate leading to the train 
shed. The only calm person in this restless throng was 
Dr. William Brown. Efficient, well groomed, and seri¬ 
ous, he made no effort to dispute his place in the crowd. 
Rosemary, his twelve-year-old daughter, tugged at his 
arm, trying in vain to make him hurry, while a smiling 
redcap followed at his heels with the luggage. 

When they reached Rosemary’s section in the Pull¬ 
man car, Dr. Brown began the advice that he had 
neglected to give earlier, “Remember your diet, Rosy 
Posy. Don’t eat green apples. And be sure the milk 


i7 



18 Mystery Mountain 

is pasteurized. Be courteous to everyone. Pay the proper 
respect to your Aunt Polly, and be kind to your cousin 
Betty. They may expect you to be snippy. Don’t be a 
snob. Be common as an old shoe.” 

“Yes, yes, yes, Daddy-Doc,” Rosemary replied im¬ 
patiently. “But I do wish they had some saddle horses 
and a tennis court.” 

“Climbing the hills and romping over the rocky 
mountainside will be a hundred times more fun for a 
change,” continued Rosemary’s father in an even, mea¬ 
sured tone. “And besides, remember—” 

“You’re surely making up for a lot of lost time,” 
Rosemary interrupted. 

Then they were both interrupted by the brakeman’s 
“All aboard! A—1—11 a—bo—o—oard!” and by the 
hissing steam and the clanging bell of the engine. 

“And if you should need me badly,” her father added 
as he gave her a parting kiss, “I could perhaps manage 
to fly up to Marquette and spend part of Sunday with 
you.” 

Rosemary’s mother had died not long before and Dr. 
Brown felt a pang of loneliness as his daughter started 
on her journey. Rosemary, however, was so excited over 
the prospects of her first trip alone that she felt only 
happiness when the train started. 

Rosemary was an attractive girl, with chestnut brown 


Alone in a Pullman 


19 


hair which curled boyishly in ringlets, and eyes that 
were grey-blue. Her profile was as delicately carved as 
a cameo, and there was about her an air of breeding and 
distinction. As the train got under way, she sat eagerly 
on the edge of her seat, gazing curiously at the people 
about her. 

She had left the Chicago station at six in the evening 
and was due to arrive in Marquette, Michigan—a town 
of some fifteen thousand that nestled on a beautiful har¬ 
bor on Lake Superior—at seven forty-five the following 
morning. After a while Rosemary became bored at look¬ 
ing at the backs of people’s heads, so she took her cousin 
Betty’s letter from her handbag, and began to read it. 

... And, oh, yes, the castle you asked about is the spook¬ 
iest place in the world, and looks down from the top of 
Harkins Mountain like a wise old owl. At a distance, 
the castle looks like a human face, and so people speak 
of it as the Old Man of the Mountain. Day and night, 
this face seems a Peeping Tom, gazing at everybody and 
everything when it shouldn’t. When a person is sent to 
run errands or goes out to play, the cold staring eyes bore 
you like a gimlet. They overlook every part of the town 
all the while, and even peer out across the Bay and count 
all the big and little ships that come and go. One even 
has the feeling that the eyes can peer through mist and 
fog and rain and everything. Oh, yes, Harkins is a Mys¬ 
tery Mountain, and no mistake. 

But really you can’t possibly imagine how creepy the 


20 Mystery Mountain 

castle is till you’ve seen it with your own eyes. I haven’t 
told you the half, and when you hear about all the ghosts 
that people have seen, you will know that I have told you 
very few of the wonders. But I must hurry so that this 
letter will get off on the evening train, and reach you be¬ 
fore you leave home.” 

Rosemary’s eyes opened wide with wonder; and when 
she closed them and tried to imagine what the face 
would be like, she grew so excited she could scarcely 
wait to see it for herself. 

“Ticket please, Miss.” The conductor’s voice chased 
away all dreamy wondering. Rosemary gave a slight 
start, and fumbled in her purse for what seemed half 
an hour. 

“Lucky you haven’t lost it yet,” the conductor smiled 
as he handed back the reservation slip. “You had bet¬ 
ter hide it away deep in the bottom of your purse this 
time, or you may lose it.” 

Entirely ignoring his sally, Rosemary asked with dig¬ 
nity, “When will the porter make up my berth?” 

“I’ll send him right away, if you wish.” 

“Oh, you needn’t bother, for I’m going to sit up ever 
so late tonight.” 

Rosemary tried to assume the poise of a grown woman 
as she opened a magazine to show the conductor that 
the conversation was ended. But the magazine was not 


Alone in a Pullman 


21 


half so interesting as Betty’s letter, which she took out 
of her bag and read for the ’steenth time. Her eyes 
filled with fresh wonder as she tried to imagine in detail 
the features of the Old Man of the Mountain. 

Before long the train stopped at Milwaukee, and Rose¬ 
mary was again brought back to the world of reality, 
when the porter conducted a young woman to Rose¬ 
mary’s section. While the luggage was being put in 
place, Rosemary recalled her father’s most emphatic 
bit of advice: “And always remember not to become too 
friendly and intimate with strangers. You never can 
tell.” 

The young woman seemed very attractive as she re¬ 
moved her soft felt hat, shook out her wavy black hair, 
powdered her nose with dainty precision, and then 
looked straight into Rosemary’s eyes. 

“And are you going far?” she asked. 

“Only as far as Marquette,” Rosemary answered with 
cool dignity. 

“Why, what a coincidence! I’m going there myself.” 

Rosemary bit her lip, thinking of her father’s warn¬ 
ing: “Beware of strangers who pretend to be going to 
the same place you are, and who say they know the 
people you know.” 

“And who are you going to visit?” continued the 
young woman with a friendly smile. 


22 Mystery Mountain 

“Betty Brown,” Rosemary replied curtly, not wishing 
to tell a falsehood nor to appear entirely discourteous. 

“Oh, yes, let me see,” the young woman answered, 
knitting her brow and seeming to think hard. “Betty 
is Hiram Brown’s daughter, isn’t she? Mr. Brown, I 
believe, is one of the foremen at the iron Ore Dock.” 

“That’s right, and of course you know Uncle Hiram 
and Aunt Polly,” Rosemary added, although with a note 
of doubt that she couldn’t quite conceal. Of course this 
strange woman would know them, for hadn’t she been 
warned that doubtful strangers always did know the 
very people you were going to visit? The thing that 
puzzled Rosemary most was the fact that this particular 
stranger didn’t look at all like a suspicious character. 
Instead, she seemed to be a perfectly delightful person. 

“And do you also know about the strange castle at 
the top of Harkins Mountain?” Rosemary asked when 
her curiosity overcame her caution. 

“Castle? Mountain? Oh, yes, you must mean the 
deserted hotel, which everyone calls the Old Man of the 
Mountain.” 

“Yes, that’s it,” Rosemary answered, her eyes aglow. 

“Since you mention it, the hotel does look like a castle, 
somewhat like those in old German prints of castles on 
the Rhine.” 

“And have you ever been near the Old Man of the 


Alone in a Pullman 


23 


Mountain?” Rosemary asked, trying to hide her excite¬ 
ment. 

“Why, yes, quite near; that is, about as close as any¬ 
one ever goes, for it’s an out-of-the-way, creepy place. 
People climb the mountain, not to see the deserted hotel, 
but because of the wonderful view, for there is a mar¬ 
velous outlook. You suddenly become aware of a wide 
circle of hills that seem to march away arm in arm to 
the far horizon; and running down to Lake Superior 
from where you stand is a valley like the palm of your 
hand, and here nestles the town of Marquette, like a 
peaceful child in its mother’s arms. But as you climb 
the mountain, your eyes turn to the pure indigo blue 
of the lake, for the vivid color recalls pictures of Italy.” 

“And what about the hotel itself?” Rosemary inter-. 
rupted eagerly. 

“Well, from a distance, it gives the impression of a 
human face. The great dormer windows are the eyes, 
and the veranda, as you look upward, seems to be a 
wide, gaping mouth. The entire face looks cold and 
calculating, and so naturally people speak of it as the 
Old Man of the Mountain.” 

“What kind of town is Marquette?” Rosemary asked. 

“It’s a homey place, and different from any town 
you’ve ever visited. You see, I’m not a native of that 
North Country, and so its uniqueness has impressed me 


24 Mystery Mountain 

a lot. Years ago, when iron ore was discovered in the 
hills around Negaunee and Ishpeming, fifteen miles 
away, Marquette became the natural port for shipping 
ore to Cleveland and Toledo and Detroit. And since 
the town has such a beautiful setting, it became the chief 
residential community of the section. As people became 
wealthy, they built beautiful homes on the hills over¬ 
looking the lake and the bay, and soon Marquette be¬ 
came the political center of the entire region, a sort of 
secondary capital of the state of Michigan.” 

“What an interesting place it must be,” Rosemary 
commented. 

“And the people are different, too. They are whole¬ 
some, hospitable folk, and spend much of their leisure 
time out-of-doors, for the natural scenery is not only 
wild and picturesque, but the streams are full of speckled 
trout, and in the woods there are deer and wolves and 
bears. Just recently I heard that they are planting moose 
in the wilder sections.” 

At this point the porter came to make up the berth 
and the conversation was brought to an end. Rosemary 
was disappointed that she had to go to bed so early, 
especially when this stranger could tell her so many 
interesting things about Marquette. 

During the night, Rosemary was too excited to relax. 
The train jiggled and rattled, and she could not go to 


Alone in a Pullman 


25 


sleep. One sentence from Betty’s letter kept running 
through her mind over and over, “The Old Man of the 
Mountain is the spookiest place in the world, and his 
face looks like a wise old owl.” 

After what seemed like a hundred years, Rosemary 
fell into a restless, fitful catnap and had a vivid dream. 
She thought the Old Man of 
the Mountain came leaping 
down from his lofty seat, and 
that the earth trembled and 
shook beneath him. When 
he caught her by the shoulder, 
she woke with a start. But as 
she sat up dazed, the porter 
was gently shaking her and 
saying, “Time to get up, Miss. 

We arrive in Marquette in 
twenty minutes.” 




2 . 

UNCLE HIRAM ASSISTS 


Betty and Aunt Polly and Uncle Hiram were so ex¬ 
cited over Rosemary’s coming visit that Aunt Polly woke 
the family at five-thirty. After a hurried breakfast, she 
bustled about, putting things in order for Rosemary’s 
arrival. 

Betty’s mother was large and fat and always short of 
breath. She often jokingly said that she guessed she was 
“somewhat without form and unavoidable.” Usually 
she was puffing and wheezing, and people who met her 
for the first time were afraid that she was in danger of 
losing her breath completely. She was a motherly soul 
and was always doing something for others, and that 
is why all her neighbors and friends called her Aunt 
Polly. 

On this particular morning she was puffing and 
wheezing much more than usual. As she polished the 
dishes at the kitchen sink, she gave crisp orders to Uncle 
Hiram and Betty. 


26 



Uncle Hiram Assists 


27 


Uncle Hiram—a sturdy, methodical man with a mind 
that worked as precisely as the multiplication table— 
was boss o£ the Ore Dock for the Duluth, South Shore 
and Atlantic Railroad. Day in and day out, year in 
and year out, he worked at the top of the towering steel 
pier that lifted its gigantic forearm far out over the bay. 
The top of the pier was a hundred and fifty feet above 
the water, and here Uncle Hiram directed the men as 
they prodded the iron ore from the railway cars into 
the yawning pockets of the dock, and then in turn from 
the dock pockets along the slender troughs into the 
cavernous holds of the anchored steel ore boats. 

The engines, as they switched the cars about the pier 
to the proper pockets, snarled and coughed and belched 
blinding sooty coal smoke. Meantime the lumpy ore 
jangled and grumbled down the long chutes, emitting 
a cloud of rusty iron dust that painted the men’s faces 
a coppery, reddish-brown and worked its way into the 
fabric of their clothes until they shone as if polished by 
a bootblack. 

Uncle Hiram also had to keep a record of the work¬ 
ing time of each of the men under him, and thus his 
mind was crammed with a hundred different accounts. 

“I figure, Poll,” remarked Uncle Hiram as he put an 
extra leaf into the round dining table, “that Rosemary 
won’t take any notice of all the cleanin’ and scrapin’ 


28 Mystery Mountain 

around we’re doin’, for if she’s anything like her illus¬ 
trious father, she’ll be the most absent-minded person in 
all creation.” 

“Don’t fool yourself, Hiram Brown,” Aunt Polly re¬ 
plied as she finished scouring her great frying pan. 
“You seem to forget that Rosemary has been reared in 
the lap of plenty and has always been accustomed to see 
things spick and span, and that her father keeps a house 
full of servants.” 

“Yes, and don’t I know that hired help is lazier than 
sin,” Uncle Hiram argued as he mounted a chair and 
dusted the three Wedgwood dinner plates on the rail 
over the sideboard. This was one of his regular duties 
whenever there was company. Aunt Polly was too heavy 
to trust herself to stand in a chair, and Betty was not 
tall enough to be allowed to handle the precious family 
heirlooms. 

“Well, it won’t hurt you a bit to help me a minute or 
two longer, for this is a very special occasion,” Aunt 
Polly added as she came into the dining room to see 
what progress he was making. “You know I don’t often 
ask you to do anything, and besides, you also know that 
you don’t like the sight o’ dust half as well as I do.” 

“But we don’t have to be quite so fussy clean,” Uncle 
Hiram stormed. 

f “You sound like a spoiled child, Hiram Brown, and 


Uncle Hiram Assists 


29 


you know it; but keep at your work, and we’ll be 
through in a jiffy.” 

All this time Betty was upstairs in her own room, 
which she was going to share with Rosemary. Her 
mother had allowed her to furnish this room to suit her 
own taste. So Betty had enameled the woodwork in 
ivory, and had painted the walls a lovely sun-glow color. 
Her curtains and tufted bedspread and braided scatter 
rugs were warm and cheerful. 

Betty prided herself most of all, though, on her vanity 
table. She had made it herself by lacquering the top of 
an old-fashioned square center table and tacking figured 
chintz curtains around the sides. She was now putting 
the finishing touches to everything in the room, hoping 
that Rosemary would admire her taste, when suddenly 
her mother’s voice rang out. 

“Aren’t you through up there yet, Betty?” 

“I’m coming down this minute,” Betty shouted in 
reply, as she arranged the wild pink roses she had gath¬ 
ered from the mountainside and smoothed out the last 
wrinkle in the tufted bedspread. 

“For goodness sakes,” called her mother in exaspera¬ 
tion, “you’re slower than molasses in cold weather. Can’t 
you hurry this once? Trains wait for no man. There are 
still a thousand things spoiling to be done!” 

Before going downstairs, Betty glanced quickly out of 


30 Mystery Mountain 

her narrow window to see if the Old Man of the Moun¬ 
tain was amused over all the excitement. He surely was, 
for strangely enough his giant features seemed softened 
into a grotesque smile. 

“Betty, must I come and drag you downstairs?” 

Betty raced happily down the narrow back stairs, hit¬ 
ting only every third tread. 

“Take this dustcloth and go over everything in the 
parlor,” Betty’s mother spoke crisply, as she finished 
pushing the damp cloth carefully over the woodwork in 
the dining room, “And remember, there mustn’t be the 
least speck of dust when you are through.” 

Betty ran into the front room, which was never used 
except when company came, and began dusting the 
willow rocker, which kept its drab appearance whether 
dusted or not. Then she went on to the golden oak 
rocker, and was rewarded by its shining smile. She gave 
the small straight cherry chair, with its fancy brocaded 
stuffed seat, only a lick and a promise. 

Fortunately, only the arms and feet of the faded blue 
tapestry davenport needed attention. Finally, Betty 
attacked the square handmade walnut table, the stereo¬ 
scopic glass, the cut glass dish of trinkets, and the family 
album done in red plush. Dusting was usually such a 
boring job, but this time Betty was so happy that she 
did not mind. 


Uncle Hiram Assists 


3i 


When Betty returned to the dining room, her father 
was in quite a turmoil, as he kept telling his wife again 
and again that he simply must leave for his day’s work. 

“I’ve only eighteen minutes to reach the dock, and 
the best I’ve ever done in my life is seventeen minutes, 
and that’s when I was much younger and in better trim 
than I am now. Why, I haven’t been late to work in 
ten years, and I’m not going to break my record today.” 

“I tell you you’re not going to budge out of this house 
till you move the sideboard over from the window. And 
besides, a carload of rusty ore one way or the other 
won’t make or break the company for this once!” 

The sideboard was the pride of Aunt Polly’s heart, 
and she was sure it would show off to better advantage 
if moved slightly. Uncle Hiram quickly realized that 
she was determined to have her way, and that he was 
only wasting precious minutes by continuing the argu¬ 
ment. So he did as she wished. 

“A little farther to the left,” Aunt Polly directed, and 
Uncle Hiram strained every muscle. “There, that’s a 
mite too far—that’s better. Now pull the right end out 
in front a few inches.” Uncle Hiram flew back and 
forth like a puppet on a string. “There, not quite so 
far. Now back an inch or two with the left end—no, 
not so far—That’s perfect. Now you can go. Thank 
you!” 


32 Mystery Mountain 

As Uncle Hiram jerked on his coat, he gave Betty a 
parting word of advice, “Share everything you have with 
Rosemary. She’s a Brown the same as you are, and 
living in the city doesn’t make a mite of difference. 
She’s your cousin.” 

Outside the door, Uncle Hiram felt as relieved as a 
mouse that has, by a miracle, escaped a trap. He hur¬ 
ried down the mountain at a half-run, and the neigh¬ 
bors knew this time that he was “Shaving it mighty 
close,” as he would say. Had they not known that 
Rosemary was coming for a visit, they would have been 
certain that his lateness was due to a death in the fam¬ 
ily. Nothing short of that would have delayed him. 
Uncle Hiram was so regular in his habits that the 
women of the neighborhood could set their clocks at 
six forty-five exactly when they saw him pass in the 
morning. 

In the last twenty minutes before the train was due, 
Aunt Polly and Betty walked down to the station. Betty 
had never before fully realized how slowly her mother 
walked. She kept wondering, as she skipped lightly 
ahead, why her mother was always urging others to 
hurry when she was so poky herself. Aunt Polly was 
doing her best, but she was wheezing so loudly that the 
neighbors wondered whether or not she would really 
make it this time. And to add to Betty’s excitement, 


Uncle Hiram Assists 


33 


the incoming train whistled shrilly before they had even 
reached the station. 

“Remember your manners, Betty,” Aunt Polly called 
between deep breaths. “It’s no disgrace to live in a small 
town; but it’s shameful to give a show of bad manners.” 

“Oh, Mother, please hurry!” Betty shouted in ex¬ 
citement, trying to recall every detail of the description 
Rosemary had given in her last letter: 

“I’ll be wearing a blue coat trimmed in red. My hat 
also has a red band; and I’ll be carrying a shiny hatbox 
in one hand and a blue umbrella in the other. My Daddy- 
Doc insists it will be raining when I get off the train. 

I don’t agree with him, but to humor his whim, I’m carry¬ 
ing the umbrella. Maybe I’ll ask the porter to call out my 
name so that you will know me, for it would be dreadful 
to be lost in a strange city. Be sure to meet me at the 
station, for I’ll surely die of heart failure if you’re not on 
the platform.” 

In spite of all their hurry, Aunt Polly and Betty had 
not a second to spare. The train came to a stop just as 
they reached the station. Betty was all expectation, and 
Aunt Polly pulled herself together with glowing pride. 
To her mind, Betty was the most wonderful girl in the 
world and would stand comparison with any girl from 
the city. A kindly smile overspread her face as she 
stopped, heaving and puffing, her eyes glued to the 
steps of the Pullman. 


3 - 

ROSEMARY ARRIVES 


When the porter opened the Pullman door, Rosemary 
was standing at the head of the line, impatient to get 
off. She had her coat thrown across her arm, but she was 
not carrying the blue umbrella described in her letter. 

Betty gave a hurried, excited glance. It seemed to her 
that a vivacious fairy with dark brown curly hair and 
sparkling gray-blue eyes had suddenly dropped down 
out of the blue sky. Betty saw instantly that her city 
cousin was twenty times more wonderful than she had 
imagined. 

Aunt Polly drew a long deep breath, lifted her chin, 
and stepped forward smiling. “Well, here you are, Rose¬ 
mary Brown, and we’re right glad to see you.” 

“Yes, here I am,” the astonished girl replied. 

“I’m your Aunt Polly.” 

“You are! Why, yes, of course. I mean, how very 
wonderful it is to meet you,” Rosemary stammered, try¬ 
ing to conceal her surprise, for she was not expecting 
quite such an enormous relation. 


34 




imilitatil 




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“We’re right glad to see you” 




















































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4 

4 















Rosemary Arrives 37 

“And this is your cousin Betty,” added Aunt Polly 
with a tone of pride. 

Betty’s face flushed crimson with excitement as Rose¬ 
mary threw her arms around her and kissed her. 

“It’s wonderful to have you here,” Betty smiled shyly. 

“It’s wonderful to be here,” agreed Rosemary. 

“But you almost fooled me,” Betty added, “for you 
weren’t carrying your umbrella.” 

Without taking time to reply, Rosemary dropped her 
shiny hatbox, gave Betty her coat, and ran back into 
the car, calling, “Please, Mr. porter, don’t let the chauf¬ 
feur or whatever you call him, step on the gas while I’m 
getting the things I’ve forgotten.” 

In her haste, Rosemary collided head-on with prim, 
old-maidish Miss Watson, who had carefully waited un¬ 
til everyone else had left the car. There was a cry of 
surprise as Miss Watson’s immaculate traveling bag 
came rolling down the steps and the infuriated woman 
scrambled after it. Rosemary apologized, but Miss Wat¬ 
son would not listen. She scolded the porter instead. 

When Rosemary next appeared, she had not only 
found her umbrella but also her shiny leather purse. 
Her hat was still at a dizzy angle after her recent col¬ 
lision. As she stepped to the platform, the porter 
drawled in an amused tone, “Here’s some mo’ of your 
baggage, Miss.” 


38 Mystery Mountain 

“Whew, that was a close call,” Rosemary laughed as 
she again faced Betty. 

Each girl was eager to find out what the other was 
like. Rosemary saw the broad smile that played across 
Betty’s flushed face; the light brown hair, combed 
straight back from the forehead and hanging in two 
braids tied with red ribbon, the mild blue eyes, wide and 
happy; and even the few persistent freckles on her 
cheeks and nose. Most of all, Rosemary noted Betty’s 
home-made dress, old-fashioned in its lines as dictated 
by Aunt Polly. But Betty, she saw, was too happy and 
excited to be at all self-conscious. Rosemary tried to 
understand the strangely beautiful face and the clothes 
that looked as if they had come from a trunk that had 
been closed for thirty years. “Betty’s surely different,” 
she was saying to herself, “but she’s certainly beautiful. 
A bit shy and old-fashioned, maybe; but what a friendly 
girl.” 

“Let me have the check for your trunk,” Aunt Polly 
interrupted Rosemary’s thoughts, “and I’ll see about 
having it delivered.” 

Betty, in the meanwhile, was trying to accustom her¬ 
self to her cousin’s expensive, lovely clothes and her 
dancing, vivacious eyes. 

While Aunt Polly arranged with the stumpy Irish 
drayman for the delivery of the trunk, overnight bag, 


Rosemary Arrives 


39 


and hatbox, Rosemary began chattering excitedly, “You 
don’t know how good it is to get out of that stuffy old 
train.” As she spoke, she inhaled a long deep breath of 
the clean vibrant air. “I just know we’re going to have 
a grand time together, Betty.” 

“Yes, I’m sure we are,” Betty beamed. 

Then Rosemary’s voice suddenly changed to a lower 
tone, “Can we see the Old Man of the Mountain from 
here?” 

“There he stands,” Betty replied quietly, pointing 
across the top of three strings of sidetracked passenger 
coaches, and along the rows of houses that clung to the 
steep side of the mountain. 

“How perfectly thrilling,” exclaimed Rosemary. “I 
just can’t wait until I’m close enough to make a face at 
him. Even from here he looks as if someone had been 
telling him to behave himself, for his left eye seems to 
be bandaged. Let’s start climbing the mountain this 
minute.” 

“Our house is the very last one you can see, perched 
near the top of the hill.” 

“It looks about the size of a tiny wren house that one 
hangs in a tree. I didn’t know you lived quite so near 
the clouds, Betty.” 

By this time Aunt Polly had finished with the bag¬ 
gage and came slowly down the platform. “That little 


40 Mystery Mountain 

chore is over with, and now, girls, let’s be heading for 
home. You know, Rosemary, if I weren’t sure of you 
in any other way, I’d know by your absent-mindedness 
that you’re Dr. William Brown’s daughter.” 

“Oh, no, Aunt Polly,” Rosemary burst out laughing. 
“Nobody can share that honor with my Daddy-Doc, for 
everybody says he’s in a class by himself.” 

“Well, we’re all a little beside ourselves this morning,” 
Aunt Polly grinned. “I just this minute discovered 
I’ve come off without wearing my precious jabot, and I 
never think of coming down town without it. What 
will the neighbors say? Come, let me carry your coat.” 

“No, thank you, I can manage it very nicely. But 
Aunt Polly, you’re going to take a taxi home, aren’t 
you? You look hot and tired, and so you take a taxi, 
and Betty and I will run on ahead and visit.” 

“Taxi, child,” laughed Aunt Polly. “Sakes alive, I 
should say not. I wouldn’t for the world trust myself 
in one of those crazy contraptions, going up that steep 
mountain. Bless your heart, Rosemary, I always walk.” 

“Please, Aunt Polly, I know you must be too tired 
to walk all the way.” 

“Well, if I feel tuckered out a bit, I’ll stop in for a 
minute at one of the neighbors and rest. But this is the 
street we take,” she added, starting to lead the way. 

Rosemary was so anxious to get a closer view of the 


Rosemary Arrives 41 

Old Man of the Mountain that she and Betty began a 
merry chase up the steep winding street. Aunt Polly, 
hurry as fast as she could, was soon far behind them. 
As the girls raced along, Rosemary continued to chatter; 
“You can’t realize, Betty, how good it seems to be away 
from the smoke and heat of the city, and so near the 
lake and the woods. Oh, we shall have such fun! ” 

By this time the brisk hard climb was bringing the 
blood to Rosemary’s cheeks, and her unbounded en¬ 
thusiasm made Betty extremely happy. 

“I know ever so many interesting places to go,” Betty 
confided. 

Suddenly the Old Man of the Mountain loomed large 
above them. Rosemary stopped to study the face, say¬ 
ing, “He looks as if he might jump down beside us any 
minute.” 

“You know it always gives me a sort of creepy feeling 
to look him straight in the eye,” Betty confided in a 
whisper. 

“He certainly has a cold, unfriendly look,” said Rose¬ 
mary. “The unequal turrets make his cap set a little 
over his left ear, as if he were a bit tipsy, and his mouth 
is too wide and straight, and it turns down in a sulk 
at the corners. He must be a lonely creature. Just the 
same, he fascinates me.” 

On and on they climbed, past long rows of houses 


42 Mystery Mountain 

that seemed to be playing leapfrog with one another 
over the protruding rocks. In their excitement, the girls 
did not notice how completely out of breath they were. 
At last Betty turned in from the street and said proudly, 
“This is where I live, Rosemary.” 

Rosemary stopped to rest and to look about her before 
going indoors. There was a tang of wildness about the 
entire surroundings that set her imagination ablaze. 
She turned and had another good look at the Old Man 
of the Mountain. Beyond a barbed wire fence, on the 
side of the mountain, there was a wide irregular stretch 
of wasteland grown to clumps of poplar, jack pine, and 
briars, from which great irregular patches of shelving 
rock protruded. The mountain was so steep above her 
that it made Rosemary dizzy to look up at it. She felt 
almost as if she were about to fall over backward. 

In the distance she could just see glimpses of a rust¬ 
ing steel picket fence. As her eyes ran up the wide 
flight of steps leading to the veranda of the old hotel, 
she thought the steps seemed strangely like a dull brown¬ 
ish bow tie, and the veranda itself gave the impression 
of a stiff collar about the neck of the Old Man of the 
Mountain. 

Filled with excited wonder, Rosemary followed Betty 
into the house, where she was greeted by the scent of 
old English lavender. 


Rosemary Arrives 


43 


“Come on upstairs, Rosemary. I want you to see my 
room,” urged Betty. 

When they reached the bedroom, Rosemary was sud¬ 
denly so tired that she flung herself across the tufted 
bedspread which Betty had smoothed so carefully and 
lovingly. Rosemary had not even noticed the spread. 
Instead, she rolled over, thus wrinkling it still more, 
and sighed, “Whew, but am I ever tired. I don’t know 
whether I’m going to enjoy living quite so near the stars 
or not. All this climbing will probably be good for my 
digestion, as my Daddy-Doc would say.” 

“We like it here,” Betty answered soberly. 

“Can we see the Old Man from this window?” 

As she spoke, Rosemary twisted about on the bed in 
order to look out of the window, and Betty’s heart 
almost stopped beating when she saw the disarray of 
her prized bedspread. Sure enough, between the boughs 
of the maple tree that flourished just outside the window, 
Rosemary could see the cold staring eyes and the wide, 
tight-lipped mouth of the Old Man. 

“Doesn’t it give you a spooky feeling to live here all 
the while?” Rosemary asked. “This face seems like the 
eyes of my conscience after I’ve done something wrong, 
only it’s a lot worse, and a hundred times more real. It 
sort of chills me, like a January fog.” 

“The eyes are always there,” Betty agreed, “and the 


44 Mystery Mountain 

mountain is an unexplored land of mystery. Sometimes 
it makes me almost silly scared.” 

“And when do we start up the mountain to inspect 
the place?” Rosemary asked in a matter-of-fact manner. 

“We don’t start ever,” Betty replied with quiet de¬ 
termination. “The place is too weird and mysterious to 
think of going any nearer than we are now.” 

“Surely you don’t mean that, Betty? Why, it can’t 
be that you’re afraid. Now that I’m rested a bit let’s 
get started. We’ll make a personal call on the Old Man 
of the Mountain without further delay. What surprises 
me most is that you say you’ve lived here all your life, 
and yet you’ve never visited the place.” 

At this moment there was a bang of the door down¬ 
stairs, and the sound of firm measured footsteps an¬ 
nounced the safe arrival of Aunt Polly. 

“How in the world,” Rosemary asked, “does your 
mother manage to climb so high? I should think she 
would burst her heart or lungs or maybe her arteries.” 

“Don’t fool yourself,” Betty replied. “My mother is 
likely to outlast all of us. Dad says she’s a regular fur¬ 
nace of energy.” 

“I wonder when that pudgy Irishman is coming with 
my luggage?” Rosemary asked as she began to move 
restlessly about the room. “If I had my trunk here and 
my things unpacked, I’d feel very much at home. But 


Rosemary Arrives 45 

I won’t feel really settled until we’ve made a formal call 
upon the Old Man of the Mountain.” 

Just as Betty was in despair because her cousin hadn’t 
said a word about her room, Rosemary happened to 
notice the pretty vanity table: “Oh, Betty, how can you 
forgive me for not seeing how lovely your room is? I 
was so tired out, and besides, my mind was on the Old 
Man of the Mountain. Oh, what a beautiful vanity 
table!” 

Tears welled up in Betty’s eyes as she said modestly, 
“Maybe you won’t believe it, but I made it all myself.” 

“And the sunny tint of the walls and the cheerful 
scatter rugs,” and Rosemary chattered on in nervous 
excitement. “What a wonderful girl you are, Betty, to 
furnish such a room all by yourself.” 

“Thank you,” Betty said in a slow sweet tone, trying 
to conceal her pleasure at Rosemary’s admiration. “But 
now we had better go downstairs and help Mother with 
lunch.” 



4 - 

A QUESTION OF COURAGE 


Rosemary was restless and excited throughout the 
morning, wishing that Aunt Polly would serve lunch 
early so that she could pay her visit to the Old Man 
of the Mountain. 

As soon as Betty had finished helping with the morn¬ 
ing chores, Rosemary began teasing her to go up the 
mountain. Betty said that she would go as far as the 
steel picket fence, which marked the halfway station up 
the mountainside, but not another step would she budge. 
She never had gone farther, and what was more, she 
never would. 

“I know it would be too spooky, Rosemary,” Betty 
added in a low tone. “Why, even the thought of going 
farther starts my imagination working until I can almost 
see ghosts right now.” 

“You talk like a fraidy-cat,” Rosemary bantered. 
“And to think, I’ve come all the way from Chicago to 
see your town, and now that I’m here, you won’t even 



47 


A Question of Courage 

go with me to the only place that’s at all interesting.” 

“It isn’t that I’m a coward,” Betty answered firmly, 
“but I’ve lived here long enough to know that it’s not 
the right thing to do under any circumstances. Plenty 
of people have tried it, and every single one of them was 
sorry afterwards. You don’t know it, but even grown 
men hesitate to go beyond the steel picket fence. They 
stand on the shelf of granite at the halfway mark and 
enjoy the view of the lake and the town, but they never 
go one step farther.” 

“Of course, if that’s the way you feel,” Rosemary 
smiled, “we’ll go only as far as the lookout today. We’ll 
sit on the granite cliff and visit and lap up the view 
just the way a kitten laps milk.” 

“There are a dozen other things we could do on this 
first day of your visit that would be lots more interest¬ 
ing. I don’t like to go even as far as the lookout with¬ 
out taking some grown person along.” 

In the end, Rosemary’s insistence won out, as it usu¬ 
ally did. Soon after lunch she and Betty went out of the 
house while Aunt Polly was still busy with the dishes. 

“You know, really, I think we shouldn’t go alone,” 
whispered Betty, who was already a bit nervous. 

“Oh, Betty, how can you think of hesitating on a day 
like this!” They soon reached the lower slopes of the 
mountain, and as Rosemary ducked through a fence, 


48 Mystery Mountain 

the back of her taffeta dress caught on the barbed wire. 
At the unexpected sound of the tearing silk, Betty al¬ 
most collapsed from sheer fright. She slumped down in 
her tracks, on the verge of shrieking. Then remember¬ 
ing how Rosemary would banter her if she refused to go 
along, she quickly caught hold of herself. Jumping to 
her feet, she followed, as best she could, at the im¬ 
petuous flying heels of her cousin. 

As they clambered over the roots of a decaying pine 
stump, they came unexpectedly upon the Rogers broth¬ 
ers, neighbors of Betty, who were seated comfortably on 
a piece of shelving rock, tinkering with a model air¬ 
plane. Tad, who was thirteen, had a mop of black hair 
across his forehead and a stubby, freckled nose; Hen, 
who was a year younger, was chubby and smiling and 
blue-eyed. Snooks, their mongrel Airedale and Collie, 
greeted the girls with a growl. Rosemary thought he 
was the homeliest dog she had ever seen. Even his tail 
was a misfit and wagged diagonally instead of up and 
down; and when he smiled, he lifted his upper lip so 
that he appeared to be snarling. The dog’s strange ex¬ 
pression, as he showed his teeth and flapped his tail, 
startled her, and she dodged behind Betty. 

“It’s only Snooks’ way of bidding you welcome,” 
Betty smiled. 

“Yes, and he’s a friendly dog, Snooks is,” Tad assured 


A Question of Courage 49 

her. “But where are you girls going, tearing along like 
a house afire?” 

“We’re going to visit the Old Man of the Mountain,” 
Rosemary replied with unconcern. 

“You’re on your way to the madhouse, you’d better 
say,” remarked Hen with emphasis. 

“That remains to be seen,” Rosemary grinned. She 
now looked sharply at the boys, whose faces were cov¬ 
ered with freckles, their legs as brown as the earth be¬ 
neath them, their shirts awry, and their caps misshapen. 
As she studied them, she couldn’t quite understand 
why they should be panicky about anything. 

“If you knew half as much about the place as we do, 
you wouldn’t venture beyond the steel picket fence. On 
your life you wouldn’t,” Tad added emphatically. 

“What is there that’s so terrible, I’d like to know?” 
Rosemary asked, looking straight into Tad’s eyes. 

“We’re not telling everything we know, for it’s no¬ 
body’s business.” 

“But you boys say you’ve been through the fence?” 

“Yes, of course we have. You see we’ve been every¬ 
where,” snapped Tad, thinking Rosemary doubted his 
word. “We’ve been through once, and believe me, that 
was enough.” 

“Didn’t I tell you?” Betty asked triumphantly. “It’s 
no place for girls to go alone.” 


50 Mystery Mountain 

“But you boys are still alive and in your right minds 
and able to remember. Won’t you please tell me what 
happened?” Rosemary continued, entirely ignoring 
Betty. 

“We’re keeping it to ourselves, thank you,” Tad an¬ 
swered, twisting his mouth into a strange expression. 

“Yes, and if ever you go,” Hen added emphatically, 
“you’ll be silent, too.” 

“You’re only trying to fool me,” Rosemary answered 
in an amused tone. “Don’t you think I can see when 
someone is trying to frighten me? Maybe I am from 
the city, and perhaps I don’t know much about the 
Old Man of the Mountain, but I surely know when I’m 
being kidded.” 

“And so you really think we’re stringing you?” Tad 
asked in disgust. “Well, if you think so, go right ahead. 
Only be sure to mark the hole between the bent pickets 
so that you can make a flying get-away. And by the 
looks of your dress, you’ll need to find a wide hole, or 
you won’t have a stitch left on you by the time you get 
back.” 

“We’re only giving you good and fair warning that 
you’ll be in a bigger hurry to escape the Old Man of 
the Mountain than you are now to visit him,” Tad 
added for good measure. 

“But what’s so terrible about him, I’d like to know?” 


5i 


A Question of Courage 

insisted Rosemary as she turned to look high above her. 

Tad and Hen cast sidelong glances at each other, and 
they smiled in a queer way but didn’t answer. 

The truth was that they liked people to believe that 
they were braver than Hercules. This illusion might be 
destroyed if they told anyone how spooky they really 
thought the place was. 

After an awkward silence, Tad suggested, “If you 
girls want a really exciting trip, Hen and I will act as 
your guides and take you to see the Stand Pipe. You can 
see it sticking up over there on Mt. Menard.” 

“That’s what I suggested this morning,” Betty again 
triumphed. 

Rosemary looked in the direction that Tad pointed 
and saw a great stack crowning the peak, lifting its 
dark form into the low clouds. 

“That’ll give you and Betty plenty of adventure,” 
added Hen hopefully. “It’s at least an hour’s walk, and 
you’ll have to climb and climb till your knees are so 
wobbly that you think they won’t ever carry you a step 
farther; but when you do get there, you can see for 
miles and miles.” 

“And on the way,” Tad continued, “your breath 
comes hotter than Snooks’ breath when he’s been chas¬ 
ing snowshoe rabbits and is all worn out.” 

“But I don’t want to go to the Stand Pipe, at least 


52 Mystery Mountain 

not today. What I do want right now is to visit the 
Old Man of the Mountain and tell him to his face how 
horrid he is to scare so many people. And if you boys 
were half as brave as you pretend, you’d go along and 
show me the best path to take.” 

At this moment the wind shifted, and from the di¬ 
rection of the castle there came a sound like the low 
wailing of a child in distress. Snooks stopped trying 
to smile. His tail became rigid, the long gray hair along 
his back bristled, and he growled menacingly. 

“Do you hear that?” Betty said. 

“Even Snooks has got common dog sense,” scowled 
Tad, “and that’s more than you girls have got.” 

“My Daddy-Doc’s a surgeon, and I’ve often heard 
sounds a hundred times worse than that,” laughed Rose¬ 
mary, “and besides, I can’t understand, for the life of 
me, why you all dread the place so much.” 

“This path you’re on will lead you right up to the 
picket fence, Miss Know-It-All,” grinned Tad in an 
attempt to hide his sudden panic. “And when you re¬ 
turn, tell us what you find out.” 

“If you don’t tell me all you know about the Old 
Man of the Mountain this minute,” Rosemary said, im¬ 
patiently stamping her foot, “I’ll go and find out every¬ 
thing. But you’ll never be any the wiser.” 

“You won’t go either,” Betty said firmly as Rosemary 



“Do you hear that?” Betty said 
























55 


A Question of Courage 

turned on her heel. Betty caught her by the wrist and 
held her. “You don’t think I’ll allow you to visit such 
a spooky place, simply because you lack the good judg¬ 
ment to know when to be cautious.” 

During the tussle that followed, there was another 
sharp rent in Rosemary’s taffeta dress. Betty proved the 
stronger; and when Rosemary found that she could not 
break away, she said, “All right. If the Old Man of the 
Mountain is as bad as you all think he is, I’ll put off my 
visit until tomorrow. I know that Uncle Hiram will 
tell me what I want to know, when he comes home from 
work.” 

Rosemary was breathing deeply after the tussle, but 
she was not at all angry with Betty; rather, her respect 
for her cousin had greatly increased. 

“You’re a wise girl,” Tad said with a grimace as he 
turned again to his model airplane. Snooks also ex¬ 
pressed approval by showing his teeth and by beating 
the ground with his erratic tail. 

“But we can at least climb as far as the cliff and sit 
there and look at the scenery,” Rosemary said as she 
started up the trail. 

When the girls were out of sight, Tad commented 
in disgust, “City girls certainly think they’re some pun- 
kins, and nobody can tell them a thing; but I’ll bet 
before long she’ll find out more than she bargains for.” 


5 - 

THE UNINVITED GUEST 


The two girls climbed the trail without once catching 
a glimpse of the Old Man of the Mountain, for they 
were walking under cover of the maples and the jack 
pines and around the jagged outcroppings of rock. 
When they reached the lookout they sat down, dangling 
their feet over the edge of the projecting rock, and sur¬ 
veyed the lake and the town. The great Ore Dock and 
the freighters seemed but parts of an artist’s painting. 
They could not see the Old Man of the Mountain be¬ 
cause of the towering cliff above them, but Rosemary 
was conscious of its nearness all the while. Two or 
three times she and Betty thought they heard strange 
noises, but they were never certain of their source. Rose¬ 
mary was bursting with curiosity to know more about 
the old hotel; but each time she asked a question, Betty 
lifted her eyebrows and said, “You had better ask Dad 
about that tonight.” 

After a time the girls grew tired of looking at the 
56 



The Uninvited Guest 


57 


scenery and started to retrace their steps along the wind¬ 
ing path. Betty heard a sudden crackling noise among 
the jack pines. Someone is spying on us, she thought 
to herself. 

When they reached the house, the girls went out on 
the small balcony over the front porch. Rosemary 
turned her eyes first in the direction of the giant face 
above her and then at the lake below her. Fascinated, 
she watched a great ore freighter glide silently around 
the end of the breakwater into the inner harbor until 
it came slowly and majestically to anchor beside the 
dock. A railway engine, with strained energy, was push¬ 
ing twenty ore cars up the long hard incline and out on 
top of the steel Ore Dock. Beyond, topping a great crag 
of greenstone, loomed the lighthouse, and to the right, 
a sailboat shouldered smoothly into the breeze. The 
lake shone like deep blue porcelain, forming the back¬ 
ground for the most beautiful natural picture that Rose¬ 
mary had ever seen. 

“This is all so beautiful, Betty,” she exclaimed in ad¬ 
miration. 

“We think it’s lovely,” Betty answered modestly. 

After a while Rosemary turned to look at the great 
bowl that time had hollowed out from the surrounding 
hills. In this natural bowl lay the city of Marquette, 
its regular rows of business streets with their monotonous 


58 Mystery Mountain 

flat roofs appearing no larger than toys that a child 
might pick up in his hands. The automobiles scurrying 
along the streets resembled a colony of ants busy at their 
work. Beyond the business section there were rows and 
rows of dwelling houses, with here and there a church 
spire rising above them. The mottled brown and gray 
Lake Superior sandstone, from which many of the build¬ 
ings were constructed, gave the scene a warm, mellow 
tone. 

It was indeed a splendid picture, and years before, a 
professional artist had put his impression of it on canvas, 
with the title The Bowl of Beauty. Every now and then 
however, Rosemary’s eyes turned from the beauty of 
this scene to the monstrous face that stared down from 
above. 

“Do you suppose it was a child in distress that we 
heard early this afternoon?” she asked Betty for the 
fiftieth time. 

“I don’t suppose anything,” Betty answered, quite out 
of patience. “Most likely it was a jibbering ghost.” 

“But, Betty, ghosts don’t walk and talk except at 
night; and besides, if things are as bad as they seem, 
won’t you go with me to search the place? If there 
really is a girl imprisoned there, we certainly can’t sit 
idly by and do nothing.” 

“You shouldn’t even make such a suggestion,” Betty 


The Uninvited Guest 


59 


replied in a low cold tone. “We might be kidnapped 
ourselves, if we go too near.” 

“They’ll never kidnap me, especially if I tell them 
who my Daddy-Doc is; for he isn’t the kind of man to 
be trifled with! It takes more than an old vacant hotel 
that happens to look like a distorted human face, to 
frighten him. Or me.” 

“Rosemary, if you don’t quit teasing me to go with 
you, I’ll end by being sorry that you came to visit me. 
When I’m bursting with curiosity to hear about all the 
wonders of Chicago, you make me miserable with your 
everlasting questions about the Old Man of the Moun¬ 
tain.” 

“I’m sorry, Betty. You see I’m so fascinated with the 
mystery that I can hardly wait another minute to start 
racing up the mountain to find out the entire secret. 
But for your sake, I suppose I’ll have to stop asking 
questions and wait until Uncle Hiram gives us permis¬ 
sion to go.” 

“But you don’t understand,” Betty cautioned. “You 
must be careful what you say to my dad. I have prom¬ 
ised him that I would never go beyond the steel picket 
fence. It will be best not to tell him that we were up at 
the granite lookout this afternoon and that we heard 
something that sounded like the wailing of a child in 
pain, or he may forbid us to go even as far as the look- 


60 Mystery Mountain 

out again, unless he or Mother would go with us.” 

“But you sound so childish, Betty.” 

“And you’re so sure of yourself, Rosemary, that I’m 
afraid you’ll do something rash and get us both into 
trouble.” 

“For your sake, Betty, I’ll be careful. So there, now! 
Don’t worry,” promised Rosemary, patting Betty’s 
shoulder. “I know I must seem terribly selfish, but I 
do so much want to go and investigate.” 

“Please don’t think me a coward,” begged Betty. 
“You’ll understand me better after you’ve been here a 
few days. Only promise me that you won’t do any¬ 
thing that we’ll both be sorry for.” 

“But what shall I say to Uncle Hiram?” 

“Simply ask him to tell you about the Old Man of 
the Mountain, how the hotel came to be built, and how 
it happens to be standing empty and looking so deserted 
and decayed. Get him started talking about its past 
history, and then maybe he’ll tell you some of the secrets 
you’re so curious to know.” 

“Shall I tell him what you’ve already told me?” 

“No. I would just ask for information.” 

“Very well, now don’t fret about it another minute, 
for Uncle Hiram shall know nothing that you don’t tell 
him yourself,” Rosemary promised. 

At this moment Tyne Trunella came clambering up 


The Uninvited Guest 


61 


the street, whistling shrilly. When she saw Betty and 
Rosemary, she shouted, “Hello, Betty, I’m coming up!” 

“Come on, I want you to meet somebody,” Betty 
answered. 

Rosemary looked at the shapeless overgrown girl, 
whose severe boyish bob gave her rawboned features a 
masculine appearance. 

“And who is this terrible Turk?” Rosemary grinned 
as Tyne came banging in at the kitchen door. 

“Her father is an ore puncher at the dock and works 
under my dad, and they’re rather poor,” Betty confided 
in a whisper. 

As Tyne came bouncing out on the porch, panting 
from her exertion, Betty said politely, “This is my cousin 
Rosemary from Chicago.” 

Rosemary saw at a glance that Tyne was the kind of 
girl who always makes herself at home wherever she is. 
Her manners were those of the camel in the old fable, 
always edging her way into everything and edging 
everyone else out, without ever considering whether or 
not she was wanted. 

“You must know something about the Old Man of 
the Mountain, too,” Rosemary began. 

“Of course, I’ve always known about the Old Man; 
and what surprises me is that you are so excited and 
crazy about the place. The hotel has been standing 


62 Mystery Mountain 

right where it is for nearly fifty years, and so far as 
I know, it’s never exactly jumped down and harmed 
anybody. But of course, we all have enough common 
sense to stay far enough away so that it doesn’t have a 
chance.” 

“So you’re scared of the Old Man, too,” Rosemary 
smiled quizzically. 

“No! A hundred times, no!” Tyne trumpeted. “I’m 
distinctly not afraid. I’m simply acquainted with the 
Old Man; and when you’re acquainted with folks, you 
know what you can do with them and what you can’t 
do. It so happens that the better you know the Old 
Man of the Mountain, the farther you stay away from 
him, that’s all.” 

“And just how does this differ from being afraid?” 
Rosemary asked impertinently. 

“It’s merely a matter of using your bean, as Tad says.” 

“Have you ever been beyond the steel picket fence?” 
Rosemary continued. 

“Yes, once, and fortunately, I ran just in time. If I’d 
been a minute later, I’m afraid there’d be no Tyne left 
today to tell the story.” 

“Somebody evidently chased you.” 

“Yes, and no. I only said I ran; and I ran because 
I wanted to run, that’s all.” 

“But what was it that made you want to run?” 


The Uninvited Guest 


63 

“Since you must know so much, it will be best if you 
go yourself some day and find out,” Tyne answered with 
a show of feeling. 

“You’re exactly like all the others. You simply make 
me sick!” Rosemary answered, quite out of patience. 
“The entire neighborhood seems to be made up of boys 
and girls who are afraid.” 

“I’d be mad with you and make you sorry for what 
you’ve just said, if you weren’t so funny,” Tyne smiled. 
“You know, Tad says you act like a puppy that’s not 
yet reached her seventh day and hasn’t yet got her eyes 
open. After you’ve been here long enough to find your 
way around alone, you’ll probably develop better judg¬ 
ment.” 

“Tyne is right,” Betty agreed, “and after a few days 
you’ll not only use better judgment, but better manners, 
too, if you don’t mind my telling you.” 

Rosemary gulped, realizing that her intense curiosity 
had caused her to be discourteous. “Excuse me, Betty 
and Tyne,” she apologized, “for my Daddy-Doc told 
me, the last thing before I left, not to forget my man¬ 
ners. I can see now that I have forgotten them, and I 
do want you and Betty to pardon me for even suggest¬ 
ing that you are afraid.” 

Just then Betty saw her father hurrying home from 
work. She was worn out trying to curb Rosemary and 


6 4 


Mystery Mountain 


was glad that she would now be relieved of the task. 
“Here comes my dad, and hell want to meet you right 
away, Rosemary.” 

As Rosemary went downstairs, she said to herself, 
“I do hope Uncle Hiram will 
be willing to answer my ques¬ 
tions, since Betty and her 
friends won’t tell me any¬ 
thing.” 













6 . 

AN EVENING OF ACCIDENTS 


As Rosemary ran through the kitchen on her way to 
greet Uncle Hiram, her toe caught against the leg of 
Aunt Polly’s stool and sent a pan of potatoes flying 
across the floor. 

“Oh, Auntie, I’m so sorry; do let me pick them up.” 

“Run along and greet your Uncle Hiram,” Aunt 
Polly laughed, “and Betty will attend to the potatoes.” 

Out into the street Rosemary raced, calling, “Hello, 
Uncle Hiram!” 

Suddenly she stopped short, thinking that the man 
coming toward her, with rusty-brown face and hands, 
was surely some gypsy or Indian. 

“Well, Rosemary, I figure you don’t quite know me,” 
Uncle Hiram smiled, “I guess you’re fooled by the iron 
ore dust.” 

“Of course it’s you, Uncle Hiram,” Rosemary replied, 
making a low curtsy, but not offering to take his hand. 

“Just you wait, a cake of soap and a tub of water can 

65 



66 Mystery Mountain 

work miracles, and you’ll be as proud of me as I am of 
you,” he chuckled as he led the way to the kitchen door. 

“I’m sure of it,” Rosemary happily agreed. 

“How’s Dr. Will—I mean your father?” he asked as 
he set his dinner pail on the kitchen table. “He’s as 
busy as ever, I suppose.” 

“My Daddy-Doc is fine as a fiddle. At least that’s 
what he always says when people ask him.” 

“He’s always been like that. And you’re having a 
good time with your Aunt Poll and Betty, I hope,” 
Uncle Hiram continued. 

Betty was busy setting the table, filling the glasses, 
and doing the other small duties that were hers at meal¬ 
time. She glanced up from her work long enough to 
ask her father, “Does Rosemary look anything like what 
you thought she would?” 

“Yes,” he answered, “only she’s considerably taller 
than I had imagined. Of course I figured she’d look 
exactly like the Browns, and I was right, for she’s the 
very spittin’ image of what my sister Martha was at her 
age, and Martha was the best looking Brown that ever 
was known—not counting you, Betty. My, but it’s good 
to see you, Rosemary, and I only wish that Will was 
here with you.” 

“Oh, thank you, Uncle Hiram, and I can see that 
you look exactly like a Brown, too.” 


An Evening of Accidents 67 

“But don’t be too harsh in your judgment. Just you 
wait till I scour three or four coats of this plaguey iron 
dust off me and get on some clean clothes, and then I’ll 
be surprised if you’re not as proud of me as Poll is,” 
he ended with a chuckle. 

“Well, Hiram Brown, you’re not such a bad old pill, 
for all your bragging,” Aunt Polly grinned as she put 
a pan of biscuits into the oven. “But get along to your 
bath, or you’ll be late for supper.” 

“At first I did think you were a sure enough Indian,” 
Rosemary giggled. 

“I could see that with half an eye,” Uncle Hiram 
beamed, starting up the stairs. 

“And now let me help, too,” Rosemary said as she 
began placing the chairs about the table. 

After a few minutes Aunt Polly called upstairs in a 
hearty good humor, “Hiram Brown, supper’s been spoil¬ 
ing this quarter hour! Get a move on and hurry down 
here if you want anything to eat!” 

As Rosemary heard Uncle Hiram coming downstairs, 
she took one more look at the Old Man of the Moun¬ 
tain, now flooded with an aura of light from the setting 
sun. She whispered to Betty, “The sun is kind to the 
Old Man of the Mountain this evening. Look at the 
beautiful picture splashed across the clouds for him to 
enjoy.” 


68 Mystery Mountain 

Uncle Hiram’s face now shone like a polished mirror, 
and his clothes were neat and clean. He called out in 
high spirits, “Now, Rosemary, I’m ready for that kiss 
you were going to give me as you came skipping down 
the street.” 

A few moments later they were seated at the table 
and Uncle Hiram was saying grace. Rosemary thought 
she heard the words “Bless Uncle Will,” but she wasn’t 
sure, for her uncle spoke in a low, indistinct tone. When 
he had finished, Uncle Hiram drew his chair a few 
inches closer to the table, saying in a happy mood, 
“You’re going to make yourself right at home with us, 
Rosemary. I’ve never yet known a Brown that was 
bashful when it comes to eating. Poll, you and Betty 
see that Rosemary has plenty, for I sometimes get so 
busy eating that I plumb forget everybody else. My 
outdoor work gives me an appetite as big as the hold 
of an ore boat.” 

“You talk just like Daddy-Doc,” Rosemary smiled, 
feeling that she was already one of the family. “Aunt 
Polly, your hot biscuits and fresh honey are simply 
delicious.” 

“And now you sound like a Brown,” Aunt Polly re¬ 
plied, “but these biscuits don’t seem nearly as light as 
usual.” 

“They’re the best I’ve ever tasted,” Rosemary added, 


An Evening of Accidents 69 

remembering her best manners. She wished that her 
Daddy-Doc could hear her now. Rosemary felt that she 
was not exaggerating the least bit, for romping up and 
down the mountain in the clean bracing air had given 
her a ravenous appetite. 

Uncle Hiram had just finished his third cup of coffee 
and had entirely lost count of the biscuits he had eaten, 
when Aunt Polly explained briefly, “Hiram, Fm sorry, 
but you’ll have to make a trip to the store, for we’re all 
out of flour. A twenty-four-pound sack will do this 
time. We also need some sugar and bread and butter.” 

For an instant a look of surprise came into his face, 
but soon he got stiffly to his feet. “This is almost worse 
than inviting the mailman for a walk after supper,” he 
said, smiling. 

“Please, Aunt Polly, can’t I help with the dishes?” 
asked Rosemary. Without waiting for a reply, she car¬ 
ried two plates to the kitchen sink. A few minutes 
later, as Rosemary reached for a towel to dry the dishes, 
Aunt Polly saw the long rent down the back of her 
taffeta dress. 

“My goodness, child, what’s happened to you? There’s 
a tear two feet long down the back of your dress and 
there’s a zigzag piece missing from the side of your 
skirt!” 

“Surely it can’t be as bad as that,” Rosemary answered. 


jo Mystery Mountain 

“Betty, where on earth have you taken Rosemary?” 

Betty went on with her work and said nothing. 

‘Til bet you’ve been up the mountain. And you 
know, Betty, you’re not supposed to go there without 
permission.” 

“We were part way up the mountain,” Rosemary 
answered, “but Aunt Polly, the fault was entirely mine, 
and I’ll take all the blame for it. I simply teased Betty 
until she had to go with me. Betty told me plainly 
enough she didn’t want to go, but I made her go.” 

“And why were you so anxious to go?” Aunt Polly 
asked pointedly, trying to become acquainted with the 
impetuous girl. 

“I was curious, that’s why,” Rosemary answered truth¬ 
fully. “I wanted to visit the Old Man of the Mountain, 
and when Betty told me how spooky and mysterious 
the place was, I wanted to go all the more.” 

“And how far did you go?” 

“Oh, not very far. While we were clambering up over 
the rocks, we came upon Tad and Hen, sitting behind 
a great granite cliff, working on some kind of model 
airplane, and so we stopped and talked with them.” 

“We did go on as far as the Lookout,” added Betty, 
“and sat there a long time and visited.” 

“It’s mighty lucky you didn’t go any farther,” Aunt 
Polly said in a most emphatic tone. 


An Evening of Accidents 71 

“Why?” asked Rosemary excitedly. 

“Don’t you know how unsafe it is up there?” 

“I don’t believe one could exactly fall off the moun¬ 
tain. At least the Old Man of the Mountain seems to 
sit tight enough,” Rosemary answered, hoping to get 
additional information. 

“Fall off!” Aunt Polly chuckled in surprise. “No, 
child, not that.” 

“What then?” 

“You’ll have to ask your Uncle Hiram about that!” 

“But haven’t you ever been there yourself, Aunt 
Polly?” 

“Gracious no, child; what would I want to go to a 
place like that for?” 

“How do you know it’s so unsafe, then?” 

“Haven’t I lived right here for twenty years, come this 
September?” asked Aunt Polly, with a smile spreading 
over her face. 

“But you say you’ve never been near the place,” 
Rosemary persisted. 

“But if one knows about a place, one knows!” Aunt 
Polly showed her feeling by washing the dishes faster. 

“But if nobody will tell me about the place, is it any 
wonder that I’m curious and excited and want to in¬ 
vestigate for myself?” 

“Your Uncle Hiram will probably tell you, if you 


72 Mystery Mountain 

ask him. But the thing you should be more curious 
and excited about is your torn dress! ” 

“Yes, I know. I wouldn’t have worn this dress if only 
the expressman had brought my trunk. But I won’t let 
it happen again.” 

Rosemary had become so absorbed in the subject of 
the Old Man of the Mountain that she absent-mindedly 
dropped the dinner plate she was drying. It crashed at 
her feet. 

“Oh, Aunt Polly, I’m so sorry. I’ll buy you another 
plate just like this one in the morning. Indeed, I will! ” 

Aunt Polly’s face showed disappointment in spite of 
herself, and she seemed to be gurgling sentences in her 
throat. For the moment she couldn’t speak. 

“How much did it cost? Would a dollar buy another 
plate just as good?” Rosemary asked, more and more up¬ 
set, as she watched the color fade from Aunt Polly’s face. 

“Oh, it’s nothing to fret about, and besides I have a 
hundred other plates,” Aunt Polly answered, trying not 
to hurt Rosemary’s feelings. In spite of all she could 
do, however, a tear rolled down her cheek, and she 
quickly brushed it off with the corner of her apron. 

The truth was that this was the last piece of china- 
ware in the set that had belonged to Aunt Polly’s moth¬ 
er, and the breaking of this plate was like the breaking 
of a close tie with the past. 


An Evening of Accidents 


73 


“It must have been my curiosity about the Old Man 
of the Mountain, and the thought of my torn dress,” 
Rosemary apologized. “Really, I’m so ashamed, for I 
do know how to dry dishes perfectly well, and if you 
don’t believe me, I’ll prove it tomorrow.” 

“Don’t think a thing more about it,” smiled Aunt 
Polly, getting herself under control. “Accidents do hap¬ 
pen in the best of families, you know.” 

While she was speaking, there was a rasp of boot 
leather on the step and in came Uncle Hiram, bearing 
a heavy load of provisions. As he set his bundles on the 
kitchen table, he beamed, “Well, a trip like this doesn’t 
make one exactly envious of Santa Claus!” 

Rosemary’s eyes danced with anticipation. Now she 
would surely hear the thrilling story of the Old Man of 
the Mountain. 



7 - 

THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN 


Uncle Hiram had scarcely seated himself in the wicker 
chair in the parlor when Rosemary began earnestly, 
“Aunt Polly promised me you would tell me all about 
the Old Man of the Mountain. I mean about the mys¬ 
tery.” 

Uncle Hiram cast a quick suspicious glance at his 
wife, as he asked in surprise, “Poll, what made you sug¬ 
gest such a story just before bedtime? It’ll keep the 
girls awake all night.” 

“I didn’t suggest it,” Aunt Polly smiled broadly, 
“Rosemary’s more curious than the cat that lost her 
nine lives, if you want to know. You can see for your¬ 
self how she’s ruined her perfectly beautiful taffeta dress 
while trying to visit the Old Man of the Mountain. 
Not only that, but she spilled potatoes all over the 
kitchen, and worst of all, she broke a dinner plate. 
We’ll all be out of house and home,” she chuckled, “or 
she’ll be without a decent stitch to cover her back if her 
curiosity isn’t satisfied pretty soon.” 


74 



75 


The Old Man of the Mountain 

“Well, if it’s as bad as all that,” Uncle Hiram said 
seriously, looking at Rosemary and wondering just what 
kind of girl she was, “I think we’ll have to end her 
curiosity once and for all.” 

“Oh, thank you,” beamed Rosemary, “I was never so 
excited about anything in all my life. It hurts me ’way 
down inside like cayenne pepper, only worse, much 
worse.” 

“I’m afraid you won’t sleep any after hearing about 
it, and I’m ashamed to be the cause of any such calam¬ 
ity.” 

“I’m sure I won’t sleep half a wink if you don't tell 
me,” Rosemary urged, “so there you are.” 

“It’s such a long story that I don’t know exactly where 
to begin,” Uncle Hiram remarked as he cleared his 
throat. 

“Begin at the very beginning,” Rosemary urged, too 
excited to keep quiet, “and don’t skip a single incident, 
and don’t you dare stop till you come to the very end, 
for I want to know everything.” 

“Rosemary’s a regular Brown, there’s no doubt about 
that!” remarked Aunt Polly, “and when she wants to 
know a thing, she wants all the details. There’ll be no 
peace around here until you tell her all that’s known.” 

“Oh, thank you, Aunt Polly,” Rosemary added eag¬ 
erly. 


76 Mystery Mountain 

“Let me see. Let me see.” Uncle Hiram settled down 
comfortably in his chair, crossed his legs, and partly 
closed his eyes in a dreamy stare. 

Seeing that he was ready to begin, Rosemary slipped 
far out on the edge of her chair, caught her heels over 
the rung, set her elbows on her knees and placed her 
chin in her hands. Now she was all ready for the story. 
Betty, noting what was about to happen, grew tense. 
She had heard parts of the story and knew how stirring 
it would be to live the incidents over again. She leaned 
back in her chair, clutching its arms in her hands. Aunt 
Polly took up a doily that she was crocheting, and her 
nimble hands began to move. 

“It was forty-nine years ago this past April when it 
all began. A Mr. Harding from Chicago, Craig Har¬ 
ding to be exact, came to Marquette to find a location, 
or rather a retreat. You see this was in the good old 
days when there were no doctors here in town. A 
Doctor Hewitt from Cleveland, after visiting every 
health resort east of the Rocky Mountains, had pro¬ 
nounced Marquette and this vicinity the most healthful 
spot anywhere in the Middle West. Why, this place 
was so blamed healthful that when anybody wanted to 
die he had to move back south to Chicago or Detroit, in 
order to find the chance to shuffle off.” 

“How interesting!” Rosemary exclaimed. 







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“It was forty-nine years ago when it all began” 














79 


The Old Man of the Mountain 

“That’s the gospel truth,” Uncle Hiram continued, 
giving Rosemary a sidelong glance to see whether she 
believed what he was saying. “The clean, ozone-laden 
air swept down out of Alaska and Hudson Bay, as clear 
and sparkling as the stars, and as invigorating as a mod¬ 
ern ultra-violet ray machine. 

“Well, this Craig Harding had been a big hotel man 
in Chicago, so he said, and had gotten into the habit 
of living too fast. Not only that, but he’d been forced 
for so long to breathe the foggy scummy air off the 
Chicago River and the dust and grime from factory 
chimneys and smokestacks that you couldn’t exactly 
blame him for getting sick.” 

“But Chicago isn’t at all like that!” Rosemary pro¬ 
tested. 

Uncle Hiram’s eyes narrowed, as he looked closely at 
Rosemary. At this instant she remembered that the 
Browns didn’t tolerate contradiction or question when 
they were telling a story, so she placed her fingers firmly 
across her mouth and sat speechless. 

“At the time Craig Harding lived there, Chicago was 
a much worse place than it is today,” continued Uncle 
Hiram. “The doctors told him that he’d contracted 
tuberculosis, and if he valued his life for as much as a 
plugged nickel, he’d better clear out, and make his home 
in some healthier climate. 


80 Mystery Mountain 

“As I said, the newspapers at that time were full of 
wonderful stories about the newly discovered Fountain 
of Youth, the Queen city of the North Country, the air¬ 
cooled roof garden of the world, as they called it. The 
climate of Marquette was said to be the great cure-all, 
the natural restorer of each man’s strength and every 
woman’s beauty. 

“After reading a number of these stories, it wasn’t 
any wonder that Craig Harding finally landed in Mar¬ 
quette. 

“When he stepped off the train here at the little 
wooden station, he was a sorry-looking specimen. His 
face was the color of skimmed milk, and his eyes were 
as heavy as iron ore, with great dark circles under them 
like ore dust. His clothes were a half-mile too big for 
him, showing that he had evidently lost weight pretty 
fast. 

“Craig Harding carried a large gold-headed cane and 
wore a derby hat. He looked the part of a perfect aristo¬ 
crat, even to the limp in his left leg; and everybody, of 
course, judging him by his manner, thought that he was 
quite a personage. 

“As soon as he got his first sniff of Lake Superior air, 
he began to hold up his head and feel better. He lifted 
his chest, and the golden ozone poured into him like 
clean water into a ship’s hold, pushing out the smoky 


The Old Man of the Mountain 81 

air he had been breathing for so long. Before a month 
had passed, he had gotten rid of his hacking cough 
altogether and had begun to sleep like a knot on a pine 
log and to eat enough to founder a ravenous wolf. It 
wasn’t long before his clothes were the right size again, 
and he looked the part of a distinguished gentleman. 

“One thing people soon discovered about him, which 
they hadn’t seen at first, was that he wore a full beard 
so that his face was completely covered. But when his 
face took on a healthy tan, they began to notice a long 
scar across his left cheek that was clearly visible because 
it still kept the color of skimmed milk. 

“Everyone speculated a lot as to what had happened 
to the man whose dagger had come so close to taking 
Craig Harding’s life; but discussing the subject was as 
far as they ever got, for Craig Harding kept his mouth 
closed as tight as a vise about anything in his past life. 

“Soon he soaked up so much energy that he began to 
hanker for something to do. He began to feel that he, 
himself, was the best possible advertisement for the Lake 
Superior climate, so he wrote back to the Chicago doc¬ 
tors and bragged Marquette up as the greatest Fountain 
of Youth anywhere in the Western Hemisphere, if not 
in the entire Milky Way. You’d have thought he was 
going to start another Barnum’s Circus by the noise he 
made. 


82 Mystery Mountain 

“The doctors wrote back, so he said, advising him to 
build a hotel, and they promised to keep it full with 
patients who needed just such a wonderful climate as 
he described. 

“Almost overnight Craig Harding became excited 
over this idea, but he kept his plans absolutely to him¬ 
self. When he did say anything about business pros¬ 
pects in Marquette, he always belittled the town. In 
searching around for the proper location for his hotel, 
he soon became a familiar sight to all, with his gold¬ 
headed cane and his derby hat and his sparkling dia¬ 
mond ring and his Scotch tweed suit. He was such a 
good actor, though, that nobody even so much as guessed 
what he was planning to do. 

“And then one day after he had walked everywhere 
else in his thorough search, he trudged up this long 
steep mountain, and when he reached the top of old 
Harkins he was so tired out that he sat down on a 
granite boulder to rest. It was only natural that his 
attention was drawn to the encircling hills and moun¬ 
tains and the dim purple mist of the distant horizon. 
Soon his eyes turned to the glowing silent waters of 
Lake Superior. There happened, at the moment, to be 
a four-masted sailing vessel coming into the harbor with 
her rigging all out, and in imagination he rode lightly 
atop the highest mast till the ship had docked. 


The Old Man of the Mountain 83 

“Men were waiting with wheelbarrows, and they be¬ 
gan pushing the reddish-brown iron ore out along the 
dock to the hungry hold of the vessel. They were so 
far below the boulder where Craig Harding sat that 
they looked for all the world like a busy colony of ants. 

“Next his gaze wandered to the hollowed Bowl of 
Beauty at his left, and he saw that the main street was 
showing vigorous signs of life. ‘Marquette ’ll be a great 
city some day,’ he mumbled to himself as he excitedly 
thumped his cane against the rock. ‘All the things that 
are being said and written about the place will be com¬ 
ing true before anyone knows what is happening.’ 

“Then Craig Harding suddenly got to his feet and 
began looking around him. ‘I figure,’ he said to him¬ 
self, ‘that right here is the exact spot for my hotel. What 
a tonic this outlook will be for wearied minds, shocked 
and worn by city life. This air and this scenery will 
work more cures than all the doctors’ prescriptions. 
Yes,’ he continued as he looked down the mountainside, 
‘and here’s a natural approach for the horses and car¬ 
riages.’ As he spoke he began sighting along his out¬ 
stretched cane in an effort to locate some landmark on 
the shore drive beneath him, where the road should 
begin. 

“That very evening Craig Harding hired Bert Collins 
who, as everybody knew, had little money, to buy the 


84 Mystery Mountain 

top of Harkins Mountain as well as the land for the 
approaching carriage road. Craig Harding was canny 
enough to know that if he tried to buy the land himself, 
the owner would stick the price up beyond reason. 

“Late that fall Craig Harding went back to Chicago, 
and early the next spring, before the snow was entirely 
off the ground, he came back, bringing an architect with 
him. This fellow sketched a wonderful castle, some¬ 
thing like one he had seen in Europe on a crag along 
the Rhine. 

“Soon the carpenters and masons were hard at work, 
and never before nor since were there so many workmen 
engaged on a single building in our North Country. 

“After two years the hotel was finished, and it was 
the most wonderful structure north of Milwaukee. The 
lobby, with its overhanging beams, was done in walnut. 
The massive fireplaces were made of mottled gray and 
red Lake Superior sandstone and Marquette greenstone. 
There was a wide circular staircase that led from the 
lobby to the various floors, to each of the observation 
balconies, and to the topmost turrets. 

“While the structure was under construction, every 
able-bodied man, woman, and child in town trudged 
up the sloping carriage road to satisfy their curiosity 
about it. 

“You can judge the size of the hotel when I tell you 


The Old Man of the Mountain 85 

that it took forty-seven carloads of furniture to fit out 
the various rooms. 

“When visitors began to arrive, Craig Harding, with 
his aristocratic manners, stood outside the main entrance 
and, with his gold-headed cane, pointed out the varied 
aspects of the natural beauty of the outlook. 

“Nobody, of course, paid the least attention to what 
he was trying to show them, for they had climbed the 
mountain solely to see the marvelous architecture, the 
gorgeous draperies, and the showy furniture. They 
were, in fact, so entirely accustomed to the natural beauty 
everywhere about them that they never even stopped 
to look at it. 

“There was just one person who was enthusiastic 
over the beauty of the outlook. This was a widow, Sally 
Payne, who pretended to write nature poetry. When 
Craig Harding remarked to her about the beauty, she 
replied, ‘Yes, indeed! How truly grand and marvelous! 
It reminds me of Lord Byron’s “from crag to crag,” 
don’t you know! I don’t believe there’s anything like 
it this side of Venice!’ The trouble was that Craig 
Harding couldn’t stop her raving, once he had her start¬ 
ed, and of course he soon got tired of her neurotic non¬ 
sense and almost had to shoo her away with his cane. 

“Finally, in disgust, at the blindness of the people 
hereabouts, he had a great granite boulder mounted on 


86 Mystery Mountain 

a base of cement, and on its face he set a bronze tablet. 
The inscription can still be read, I suppose, if it’s not 
entirely overgrown with moss or poison ivy: 

MAN HAS BUILDED THE CASTLE 
BUT 

THE MOUNTAIN AND THE LAKE 
ARE THE HANDIWORK 
OF GOD 

“There was a tradition that Craig Harding had placed 
a curious copper box containing some valuable papers, 
in the center of the boulder, but nobody ever knew for 
certain about this. 

“When the hotel was finally opened for business, the 
trains began bringing carload after carload of nervous 
and tired people from the city, and also hay fever pa¬ 
tients, as well as any number of adventurers. 

“Craig Harding had everything organized here just 
as he had done in the city. His coachmen, who went 
down to meet the trains, and his bellhops at the hotel 
all wore showy livery. They looked as though they’d 
just jumped off the ironing board, they were that spick 
and span. 

“At first things seemed to be moving along wonder¬ 
fully, but the second summer was not quite so good. 
And then a few years later there was a panic throughout 
the country, and the hotel was two-thirds empty. 


The Old Man of the Mountain 87 

“People throughout the town began to whisper that 
Craig Harding had a white elephant on his hands, and 
they wondered how in the world he’d ever get rid of it. 

“Things rapidly went from bad to worse for nearly 
ten years, until at last the coachmen were dismissed, and 
the bellhops—there were only two left—went about in 
their shirt sleeves without any sort of uniform at all. 

“There was a lot of talk that Craig Harding was 
worse than bankrupt, and people whispered that they 
knew he could never keep open another season. 

“And then the next thing the town heard was that 
Craig Harding was missing. The news ran like wildfire 
from one street corner to the next. His name was on 
everybody’s lips; and when time went on without his 
being found, the papers began to carry black scareheads. 
Soon his disappearance had become a nationwide mys¬ 
tery. 

“The evening before his strange disappearance, Craig 
Harding, in accordance with his usual habit, had sat 
in his huge leather rocker before the great sandstone fire¬ 
place with his few guests. He was naturally a good 
story teller, and on this particular evening he was at 
his best. 

“Promptly at ten o’clock, he bade his guests good¬ 
night and went to his private suite of rooms overlooking 
the lake. The moon had just risen over the lake and 


88 Mystery Mountain 

had turned everything into a world of wonder and 
mystery. 

“Next morning, when breakfast was served, Craig 
Harding was not in his usual place at the head of the 
table. As the guests filtered into the dining room, they 
began to ask one another if they had heard strange noises 
sometime after midnight. They had all heard them, but 
had merely supposed that someone had been drinking 
and had gotten quarrelsome, so they had paid no more 
attention. 

“After breakfast one of the bellhops was sent to call 
Craig Harding. He began by knocking gently, and 
then louder and louder; and when he had no response 
he turned the doorknob and, strangely enough, the door 
opened. It had been Craig Harding*s unfailing habit to 
lock his door with a special night latch, and in addition 
to bolt it securely. 

The bellhop found that every drawer in the massive 
chiffonier, dresser, and wardrobe had been pulled out 
and emptied in the center of the floor. Every pocket 
in the two suits of clothes left hanging in the wardrobe 
had been turned inside out. In his fright the bellhop 
sounded an alarm, and the guests came in to help solve 
the mystery. 

“It was soon discovered that a Miss Harriet Fairfax 
was also missing. She had been a summer boarder at 


The Old Man of the Mountain 89 

the hotel for three seasons, and had registered as coming 
from Chicago. She had always been a strange secretive 
person, who wore her clothes as neat as a pin but who 
seemed dreamy and sad. There were repeated whisper¬ 
ings about her friendliness with Craig Harding, but no 
one knew anything definite about her private affairs. 

“When the door of her room was forced open, every¬ 
thing was in perfect order. Her travelling bags and her 
clothes were missing, but nothing else had been dis¬ 
turbed.” 

Uncle Hiram paused a moment before beginning the 
next part of the story. 

“Hiram Brown, it’s already five minutes past nine 
o’clock,” announced Aunt Polly. “We’ve all had a long 
day, and besides, it’s five minutes past our bedtime.” 

“But Aunt Polly,” Rosemary pleaded, “the story is 
entirely too exciting to stop now. I won’t sleep a wink, 
Uncle Hiram, if you don’t finish.” 

“But you won’t sleep a wink, no matter where I stop 
in this story, as I told you before I started it,” Uncle 
Hiram smiled dryly as he lifted himself out of his chair. 
“That’s the Brown of it!” 

“Well, I suppose that’s that! ” Rosemary answered in 
disappointment. 

While Uncle Hiram was winding the clock, whose 
face seemed serious and whose long brass pendulum dull, 


90 Mystery Mountain 

he called over his shoulder, “Rosemary, you and Betty 
forget about the story till tomorrow evening and run 
off to bed now like good girls.” 


Betty rose from her chair slowly, as if she had been 
glued to it, and obediently said goodnight and started up 









8 . 

GHOSTS OR FAIRIES 


As soon as Rosemary and Betty were in their room, 
Rosemary turned off the light and peered through the 
window at the Old Man of the Mountain. 

A mellow silvery light from the full moon fell upon 
the face of the castle, bathing it in a mystic haze that 
immediately aroused Rosemary’s imagination. 

“Look, Betty,” Rosemary whispered, “isn’t he smiling 
more than usual tonight? His great eyes are softened 
and his long flat nose rounded out, and his wide slit lips 
seem to turn up at the corners. Even his cheeks look 
as if he’d been laughing, for they are aglow, and the 
shadows from the three turrets make his hat appear to 
sit even more rakishly than ever.” 

“I’ve watched his face thousands of times,” Betty an¬ 
swered as she cuddled down on the floor beside Rose¬ 
mary and looked out of the window. “I’ve become so 
used to it that it seems a natural part of the scenery to 
me now.” 


9i 



92 Mystery Mountain 

“How I wish I were a man and big like my Daddy- 
Doc, for then I’d climb Mystery Mountain in a hurry,” 
Rosemary boasted excitedly. 

“Well, if I were a whole army of men,” Betty re¬ 
plied, “I’d march straight away in the opposite direc¬ 
tion” 

“It seems to me that I see something white moving 
around!” Rosemary whispered, gazing intently at the 
mountain. “You don’t suppose they’re ghosts? Oh, now 
they seem to be dancing like fairies! ” 

“They probably are ghosts, for there’s likely to be 
everything around that place—bears in the woods be¬ 
yond, and wolves, and everything wild. But please do 
come away from his window, Rosemary, or neither of 
us will be able to sleep a wink!” 

“We can sleep any night, but a sight such as this 
comes but once in a lifetime. Look, Betty, there are a 
hundred sparkling nymphs dancing about, and they’re 
so rhythmic and beautiful that I’d like to be one of them 
myself. Do you suppose the Old Man of the Mountain 
imprisons these spirits during the day and then gives 
them an hour or two of play in the moonlight?” 

“I’ve often wondered about them, too,” Betty ad¬ 
mitted, “and once I wrote a little poem about them, and 
imagined each one a winking fairy firefly.” 

“Isn’t it fascinating to sit here at the window and 


Ghosts or Fairies 


93 


watch. It must be beautiful to dance about scarcely 
touching your feet to the ground, and it must be mar¬ 
velous to float through the air with wings like a fairy! ” 

“I once wrote a little poem about that, too,” Betty 
confided modestly. 

“Really, the face of the Old Man of the Mountain 
doesn’t seem nearly so cold and calculating as it did 
this afternoon. If he enjoys the dancing of the spirits 
in the moonlight, he must have some love for the 
beautiful.” 

“Funny, isn’t it, but I’ve often thought of these same 
things,” Betty spoke dreamily, trusting her secret for 
the first time. 

“But look, Betty, do you see what I see?” Rosemary 
whispered eagerly. “I simply can’t describe it, but they 
seem to be crowning a Queen of the May or something 
like that. They’re moving around much faster.” 

“Oh, yes, it’s what I once made the title of a poem, 
The Fireflies’ Ball.” 

They’re too beautiful for words. I don’t see how there 
can be anything on the mountain to make one afraid.” 

“We mustn’t sit here all night, Rosemary,” Betty 
whispered, rising and taking her cousin by the arm. 
“There are so many things to do tomorrow.” 

“You must be tired, Betty, I know, with all the excite¬ 
ment, but I can’t think of leaving the window while 


94 Mystery Mountain 

the moon is so lovely. I have never seen anything in 
Chicago as beautiful as this. Don’t you suppose the 
Old Man of the Mountain has some arrangement with 
Puck and Pan and the Queen of the Fairies to put on 
this show for him?” 

“I’m sorry, Rosemary, but I’ll fall asleep here if I 
don’t climb into bed,” Betty answered as she begun un¬ 
buttoning her dress. “Of course, it must seem very 
strange to you, seeing it for the first time.” 

As soon as Betty’s head struck the pillow she was 
asleep. It had been a long eventful day, and she was 
worn out from nervous excitement as well as physical 
fatigue. 

Rosemary continued to sit at the window. She let 
her imagination run riot as she feasted her eyes on the 
mysterious moonlit landscape. When the moon shifted 
in the sky, the spirits gradually disappeared and the 
great face again assumed a look of cold unconcern. 

Rosemary had watched, fascinated, while the moon 
had cast a sidelong silvery glance at the spirits dancing 
along the observation towers which formed the Old 
Man’s nose and mouth. As she looked at the sparkle 
of their moving forms, it seemed as if they changed their 
tempo to a slow stately measure. She tried to call Betty 
back to the window, but Betty was too soundly asleep 
to be awakened. 


Ghosts or Fairies 


95 


Slowly the moon again shifted, and gradually the 
dancing figures made their exit and disappeared. The 
massive face fell into dark shadows so that Rosemary 
could no longer distinguish the separate features. For a 
time longer she amused herself imagining how the Old 
Man’s expression changed from minute to minute, until 
she fancied that he was fast asleep. 

A sudden gust of cold night air finally sent Rosemary 
to bed. When she tried to relax and go to sleep, her 
imagination became more active than it had been at any 
time during the day. 

“I wonder what happened to Craig Harding,” she 
asked herself, and then lay awake most of the night try¬ 
ing to answer the mystery. “Do you suppose I actually 
saw ghosts? Or were they fairies dancing around the 
Old Man of the Mountain? Or did I merely see fireflies 
in the grass, and then fancy, as Daddy-Doc would say, 
that I saw spirits? No, Daddy-Doc, I surely saw some¬ 
thing more than fireflies this time. They must have 
been spirits of some sort. But what do you suppose hap¬ 
pened to Craig Harding?” 

While her thoughts were thus running in circles, 
Rosemary was suddenly brought back to reality by 
Betty, who sat up in bed, and cried out in a harsh 
voice, “There he is! There he is! He’s coming! Look 
out, I say!” 


96 Mystery Mountain 

Rosemary grasped Betty’s arm. “What is it?” 

“Oh, is it you, Rosemary, and am I still in bed?” 
gasped Betty, as she awakened just long enough to re¬ 
alize that she was dreaming. 

It was after three o’clock in the morning before Rose¬ 
mary’s imagination began to tire. Time after time she 
was on the verge of falling asleep, and then suddenly 
was awakened by the mysterious face of the Old Man 
of the Mountain. After much tumbling and tossing 
about, she drifted off to dreamland, saying to herself: 
“The spirits I saw tonight were so beautiful and so like 
lovely dancers that I’m sure they would harm no one. 
Tomorrow night, I think I shall fix some kind of lad¬ 
der so that I can climb down from the window and 
scamper up the mountain to join in the dance myself.” 

And with the resolve that she would soon solve the 
mystery, Rosemary fell asleep. 

Early the next morning, Betty got quietly out of bed 
and dressed herself without waking Rosemary. Just as 
she was leaving the room, Rosemary said quietly, “You 
can’t guess, Betty, what I’ve decided to do tonight.” 

“Why, good morning, Rosemary,” Betty smiled. “No, 
I haven’t the least idea.” 

“Well, this is it. Tonight I’m going to climb the 
mountain as soon as the fairies begin to dance, and find 
out what became of Craig Harding.” 


Ghosts or Fairies 


97 


“There can’t be any connection between fairies and 
Craig Harding,” Betty laughed outright. “You must 
still be dreaming.” 

“No, I’m not, Betty, and I’m going, so there!” 

“And I’m sorry if we must have this all over again 
today. But you go back to sleep, while I help Mother 
with the morning work.” 

Betty was thinking, as she went down the stairs, that 
Rosemary would probably do something rash and fool¬ 
ish, and she felt utterly helpless to prevent its happening. 

Her father greeted her, and then asked, “How are 
you this morning, Betty? You look rather pale and 
tired. I hope you weren’t upset by the story last night.” 

“No, I’m all right,” Betty answered as she sat down 
at the table and nibbled at a piece of toast. 

“But you aren’t eating enough to keep a sparrow 
alive,” her mother commented. 

“I’m not hungry this morning, Mother,” Betty in¬ 
sisted. 

A few minutes later, when her father started to work, 
Betty walked with him to the end of the street. She 
had decided to tell her troubles to Tyne on the way 
home. Perhaps Tyne could help her find a way out. 

When Tyne had heard Betty’s story, she stood up 
straight and spoke confidently, “We’ll cure your head¬ 
strong cousin, or know the reason why. We’ll take Tad 


9 « 


Mystery Mountain 









9 * 

ROSEMARY GOES EXPLORING 


It was after nine o’clock when Rosemary’s eyes 
snapped wide open. She sat up in bed, looked around, 
and, for a minute couldn’t imagine where she was. 
Then suddenly she remembered everything. Jumping 
quickly out of bed, she ran to the window to see if the 
Old Man of the Mountain was still where she had left 
him. 

“Don’t be surprised if I come up to visit you before 
the day is over,” she began excitedly, “and you needn’t 
think I shall be frightened, even if you do look cold and 
forbidding.” 

Rosemary opened her wardrobe trunk, put on hiking 
clothes, and hurried downstairs, hoping she had not in¬ 
convenienced Aunt Polly by getting up late. “I hope I 
haven’t kept you waiting breakfast, Aunty,” she apolo¬ 
gized as she reached the kitchen. 

“Goodness, no, child,” Aunt Polly burst out laughing 
as she finished rolling the crust for a cherry pie. “You 


99 



ioo Mystery Mountain 

see, the world moves along in about the same groove 
day after day in this house.” Then she added with dry 
humor, “The trouble with you, Rosemary, is that you’re 
up too late for breakfast and a bit too early for lunch.” 

“But I’m not at all hungry,” Rosemary smiled in 
reply. 

“I’m only teasing you, Rosemary. Every healthy girl 
wants nourishment in the morning.” 

While Rosemary ate her fruit and toast and drank her 
milk, she made conversation. “What a pretty place you 
have here, Aunt Polly. Last night the moonlight through 
the window was perfectly beautiful.” 

“The fireflies are in season now, and they do add a 
little to the landscape.” 

“It wasn’t just the fireflies, but something a hundred 
times more mysterious. Really, there’s nothing at all in 
Chicago to compare with what I saw last night.” 

“It’s good to hear you say that, for I’ve noticed that 
most people from the city seem to think that even Nature 
is found only in big towns, when, as a matter of fact, 
Nature loves small towns and country places most of all.” 

At this moment Rosemary remembered her cousin. 
“Where is Betty?” 

“She’s gone to Tyne’s house, the third house on this 
side of the street not counting ours. You’ll know it by 
the clump of mountain ash bushes in the front yard.” 


Rosemary Goes Exploring ioi 

“Thank you, Aunt Polly, I think I’ll see if I can find 
her,” Rosemary said as she skipped out the door. 

As she walked through the yard, Rosemary heard 
voices and stopped a minute to listen. It sounded as if 
Tad and Hen and Tyne were in some sort of argument. 
At first she thought of joining them, and then she had 
a better idea: 

“This will probably be the best chance I’ll ever have 
to visit the Old Man of the Mountain,” she said to her¬ 
self. “At least I’ll go as far as the lookout where Betty 
and I were yesterday. Surely there can’t be any harm in 
going there alone.” 

Rosemary walked on cat’s feet until she was certain 
that no one could hear her, and then she hurried along 
the path, clambering over boulders and through deep 
tangles of grass and across steep gullies. 

In a few minutes, she was so excited with her adven¬ 
ture that she thought of going all the way to the Old 
Man of the Mountain. After a half hour’s climb, she 
was out of breath, and sat down on a pine stump to rest. 
For fear that someone might see her, she slid down be¬ 
tween two large boulders, which entirely concealed her. 
After resting a few minutes she began climbing again, 
up and up, through jack pine thickets and past prickly 
briars and Canadian thistles and over masses of jagged 
rock. The climb itself was such fun that she thought 


102 Mystery Mountain 

little about where she was actually going. Her cheeks 
were rosy as two red apples, and she was wet with 
perspiration. 

After another half hour of the hardest kind of going, 
Rosemary finally came to the sagging steel picket fence 
that she had been warned never to cross. As soon as she 
realized where she was, she knelt down behind a large 
jagged granite boulder and cautiously peered to one side 
and then to the other. Her heart was thumping as loud 
as a bass drum. Surely the Old Man of the Mountain 
would hear it. 

The enormous face was peering down from almost 
directly overhead, and was so near that Rosemary could 
not distinguish the separate features. The huge eyes 
were hidden by two towering Lombardy poplars. What 
she saw was a great wooden building brown with decay, 
with no signs of life about it. When a deep shadow 
settled over the place as a threatening rain cloud passed 
overhead, a spooky feeling clutched at her heart. 

For a moment nervousness almost overcame her, and 
she felt like running down the mountainside. Then she 
thought of her Daddy-Doc, and her courage returned. 
“If he were here, he’d say, ‘Stick it out, that’s the girl! 
A Brown never runs, you know!”’ 

This thought lessened her nervousness, and she began 
to make careful observations. The longer she looked 


Rosemary Goes Exploring 103 

about her, the less she saw to frighten her. The leaves 
on the poplars rustled, as if in terror, whenever a gust 
of wind passed, but the girl soon became accustomed 
to this sound. A red squirrel raced here and there 
through the trees and seemed to be running away from 
something mysterious, but Rosemary decided that this 
was merely his natural friskiness. 

After what seemed an hour, Rosemary crept on hands 
and knees until she found two pickets bent apart as if 
someone had already opened a passageway. “This hole 
will do very nicely,” she whispered to herself. 

Before creeping through the hole, however, she 
looked here and there and everywhere until she had 
convinced herself that no one was around the place. 
Suddenly a granite monument, barely visible through 
the tangled grass, caught her eye. “Why, of course,” 
thought Rosemary. “This is the one that Uncle Hiram 
described. I must find out if the inscription can still be 
read. Let’s see; it should go something like this: ‘The 
carpenters made the hotel. God created the lake and the 
jagged mountain.’ ” 

With this thought uppermost in her mind, Rosemary 
crept stealthily through the fence, too excited now even 
to hear her heart, which was pounding like a tripham¬ 
mer. She was intensely alert, and ready to escape 
through the picket fence at the least sign of danger. 


[04 Mystery Mountain 

Suddenly, without any warning, there came such a wild 
clatter that it fairly froze her blood. In a frantic effort 
to get to her feet and run, she stumbled and fell head¬ 
long in the deep tangled grass. 

After what seemed an eternity to the trembling girl, 
the noise stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and she 
got to her feet. For two or three minutes Rosemary 
was in a complete panic, wondering if she would ever 
find the strength to creep back to the waiting hole in 
the fence. Then, before she could summon the courage 
to try, the sound began again. This time it seemed less 
terrifying and when, later, it began a third time, she 
raised her head and looked about her. What she saw 
was an impertinent red squirrel, with his tail cocked 
above his head, chattering as if he had gone crazy. 

Rosemary sank limply to the ground, giggling at the 
foolishness of her fright. “If my Daddy-Doc were here, 
he would surely think me a stupid, stupid child.” 

When her strength returned, she crept cautiously to 
the monument, and discovered that something had hap¬ 
pened to it very recently. A bolt of lightning had torn 
a hole in one side of the cement foundation so that the 
bronze inscription had toppled over on its face and lay 
almost hidden in the grass. While examining the stone, 
Rosemary saw through the opening hewn in the bottom 
of the rock a strange copper box. To the imaginative 


Rosemary Goes Exploring 105 

girl it seemed to say, “Why don’t you pull me out of this 
dark hole? I’m tired of lying here so many years.” 

Almost as if to oblige the box, Rosemary grasped it, 
and strangely enough, it came tumbling out without 
the least resistance. As she examined it, she was certain 
that it contained papers that would prove very, very im¬ 
portant in solving the mystery of the Old Man of the 
Mountain. 

A new thrill of excitement swept over her as she sat 
in the grass clutching the box. Suddenly a large piece 
of paper fluttered down to the ground directly in front 
of her. Without the least idea where it had come from, 
Rosemary reached out curiously and grasped it. Sure 
enough, it was real paper with real writing on it. Afraid 
that someone might see it, she folded it and quickly 
thrust it into her blouse pocket. 

Rosemary now lost no time in creeping back to the 
opening in the steel picket fence. On the way back, she 
again heard a terrifying sound. It seemed to be the plain¬ 
tive voice of a girl, but where it came from or what it 
said, she was too frightened to understand. All she 
knew was that it seemed to come down directly from 
the sky. 

By exerting all her will power, Rosemary managed 
to reach the picket fence. When she was safely behind 
the protruding rock, she lay on the ground, nervously 


106 Mystery Mountain 

clutching the mysterious box in one hand and the mys¬ 
terious paper in her pocket with the other. Sheer fright 
had taken all her strength, and each time she tried to 
get to her feet, her knees crumpled under her. How 
long she waited she never knew, but after what seemed 
years, she was able to start slowly down the mountain. 

As her strength gradually returned, Rosemary walked 
faster, holding the precious box tightly under her arm 
and making sure that the piece of paper in her pocket 
did not mysteriously hop out and disappear. 

When sheer fatigue forced her to sit down and rest, 
she began to examine the box. Its top was covered with 
a strange engraving which, when held at one angle, 
looked like a castle, and at another angle, like a human 
face. After puzzling over this for a time, she discov¬ 
ered that it was a likeness of the Old Man of the Moun¬ 
tain. Rosemary was now very sure that the box con¬ 
tained precious papers. 

She tried to open it, but the lid was locked securely 
from the inside. When she shook the box, the papers 
inside shifted from end to end. They undoubtedly con¬ 
tained information that would help to solve the mystery. 

A surge of pride came over her as she thought of 
what her Daddy-Doc would say when all the facts were 
disclosed. Happily and with renewed courage, she has¬ 
tened down the mountainside at a faster pace. 


10 . 


UNDER THE MULLEN STALK 

As Rosemary hurried down the mountain, she kept 
wondering what to do with the mysterious copper box. 
She had not the strength to open it, although she felt 
sure that its contents were of great importance. 

“If only my Daddy-Doc were here,” she said to her¬ 
self, “we’d solve the mystery in no time. Then Craig 
Harding wouldn’t be so misunderstood and the Old 
Man wouldn’t seem such a terrifying mystery.” 

While crossing a narrow gully between two pointed 
rocks, she heard the indistinct hum of voices. She 
crouched behind a granite boulder to listen, and im¬ 
mediately recognized Tyne’s booming voice. 

“Yes, Betty’s cousin Rosemary will wish she was back 
where she came from by the time we’re through with 
her.” 

“You said something this time,” Hen laughed. “When 
she meets this outfit and hears the bellow we’ll make 
and sees our terrible faces, she won’t stop running till 
she hits old Chicago on the hop.” 

107 



io8 Mystery Mountain 

This brought more laughter, and Rosemary’s cheeks 
burned and her throat went dry as she realized that 
Tyne and Tad and Hen were planning to play a trick 
on her. 

“She’s long overdue,” Tyne added. “Silence! I think 
I hear her coming.” 

This plot, without Rosemary’s knowing anything 
about it, had been hatched earlier in the morning when 
Betty went to Tyne for help in preventing Rosemary 
from rashly going to the top of Mystery Mountain. Betty 
was to wait till Rosemary had finished her breakfast 
and was then to encourage the venturesome girl to climb 
up the rocks toward the Old Man of the Mountain. 
When Tyne and Tad and Hen saw her coming, they 
were to pretend that they were jibbering ghosts. 

Rosemary listened until she had overheard all the de¬ 
tails of the plan. Then she decided to advance upon 
them when they least expected it and give them a sur¬ 
prise. Suddenly remembering the precious copper box, 
she realized that she must not allow anyone to know 
that she had found it. If she did, the secret would be 
out. She looked quickly in every direction for a place 
to hide the box, and the best place she could find was a 
crevice beneath an irregular granite rock that was over¬ 
spread by a great mullen stalk. 

Into this opening Rosemary thrust the box and cov- 



Into this opening Rosemary thrust the box 



















Under the Mullen Stal\ in 

ered it with small pieces of rock and dead leaves. Then 
she walked silently forward and around to the opposite 
side of a shoulder of rock where Tyne and Tad and Hen 
were rehearsing their parts. In an attempt to disguise 
themselves completely, they had put on costumes which 
Tyne and Tad had found in their attics. 

Rosemary came upon them quite without warning, 
although Tad had been stationed on a shelving rock as 
a lookout. Pretending innocence of all that she had 
overheard, Rosemary called out laughingly, “Is this 
some new kind of Hallowe’en game? And won’t you 
let me join in your frolic?” 

Tad climbed down from his seat, looking somewhat 
foolish, and Hen grabbed his false face that resembled 
a skeleton, while Tyne pulled down her dunce cap and 
her witch’s face, and wrapped her Japanese printed 
kimono tighter about her. Rosemary burst out laughing 
at their confusion. Finally Tad pulled off his monstrous 
Santa Claus hat and whiskers and smiled grimly. 

Snooks was the only one who acted at all natural. He 
pounded the ground with his clumsy tail and showed 
his shiny teeth in a pained effort to smile in order to 
show that as far as he was concerned, Rosemary was 
welcome. 

“Come now, don’t let me spoil your game,” Rose¬ 
mary went on. “I’ll do whatever you’re doing.” 


112 Mystery Mountain 

“You’re just too late,” Hen scowled as he stripped off 
his horrible skeleton makeup. “If you want to know, 
we were planning to give you a real scare, but you’ve 
spoiled all our fun.” 

“I told Tyne it wouldn’t work,” Tad added in dis¬ 
gust, “but she would have her way.” 

“But I don’t quite understand,” Rosemary said, in the 
hope that they would tell her the truth. 

“Well, you see it was this way,” Tyne explained. 
“Betty said that you were planning to make a trip to 
the top of Mystery Mountain, and she thought, for your 
own good, that we should stop you from doing any¬ 
thing so rash.” 

“That’s the truth,” Tad continued. “We all thought 
you might get yourself into serious trouble.” 

“But you’re on your way up to visit the Old Man 
of the Mountain now, I suppose,” Hen smiled dryly. 

“No, indeed,” Rosemary answered, “I’m on my way 
back to Aunt Polly’s, for I’ve already made my visit.” 

“You didn’t!” Tad asserted. 

“And that explains why we didn’t see you coming; 
we were looking in the wrong direction,” Hen grinned. 

“What did you see at the top of the mountain?” Tad 
asked, trying to hide the interest he felt. 

“For the present I’m keeping that quite to myself,” 
Rosemary replied, “and if you want to know what’s 


Under the Mullen Stcd\ 113 

there today, you’ll have to go and see for yourself.” 

“Maybe there’s a good reason why you’re not telling,” 
Tyne suggested. “Just how can you prove that you’ve 
been there?” 

“I’m not trying to prove it,” Rosemary laughed, “I’m 
merely telling you.” 

“Her shoes and the cockleburrs on her clothes show 
that she’s been somewhere,” Tad commented, “and the 
grass seed in her hair.” 

“There’s no doubt about it,” Rosemary answered. 

“But you said a minute ago that you wanted to join 
us in our play,” Tad continued, changing the subject. 
“We’ve been planning to put on a home-made circus 
next week. Would you like to help us with this?” 

“I think it would be great fun if you’ll let me be 
your solo dancer.” 

“How are you going to prove that you can dance?” 
asked Tyne impertinently. 

“You’re always wanting proof,” Rosemary laughed, 
“and this time I’ll try to give it.” 

Before the children quite realized what she was do¬ 
ing, Rosemary had climbed to the top of the smooth 
rock where Tad had been stationed and did a bit of 
lively aesthetic dancing. 

Tad and Hen were fascinated, wondering how she 
could bend and sway so gracefully, while Tyne felt 


114 Mystery Mountain 

large and clumsy, as she unconsciously moved her body 
awkwardly in time with the rhythm. 

The next minute Rosemary leapt down from the rock 
and asked about Betty. 

“She’s probably still hunting for you,” Tyne ex¬ 
plained, “She went down to find you two hours ago, 
and hasn’t come back.” 

“Then I must find her; I hope she isn’t worried 
about me,” Rosemary called as she hurried away. “And 
I’m sorry if I’ve spoiled your fun. Very likely I would 
have been frightened if you had seen me first.” 

“There’s no doubt about it,” shouted Tyne. 

As she hurried toward Aunt Polly’s house, Rosemary 
kept a sharp watch for landmarks so that she would 
know exactly where to find the precious copper box 
when she wanted it. “Here are three trees in a row,” 
she said in a conscious effort to remember, “one is a 
gnarled and bent evergreen, and another is as straight 
and gaunt as a church steeple, and the third has a hump 
on his back like a camel. I’m sure I won’t forget these. 
Yes, and here is a funny boulder that looks shiny and 
jagged like a giant’s tooth. Who knows but the Old 
Man of the Mountain sneezed this out some dark night 
when no one was looking.” 

As Rosemary walked farther and farther, her heart 
began to sink for fear that she might not be able to find 


Under the Mullen Stcd\ 115 

the box when she later needed it. There were so many 
crooked and straight and humped trees on all sides that 
already she was becoming bewildered. She tried all the 
harder to fix firmly in her mind the three trees in a 
row and the jagged tooth of rock. 

When Rosemary finally reached Aunt Polly’s, the 
screen door was latched and the kitchen was empty. As 
she sat down on the back steps to think, she noticed that 
she was trembling like a leaf. And it was no wonder, 
for this was the first time that she had ever experienced 
a real first-hand adventure. In this one crowded morn¬ 
ing she had actually lived an adventure that had been 
beyond her wildest dreams. A little smile played across 
her face as she reviewed the tense moments when she 
had lain crouched in the grass, terrified by the chattering 
red squirrel. 

Gradually becoming conscious of something burning, 
Rosemary looked in at the screen door and saw smoke 
escaping from the oven. She ran around to the front of 
the house where, luckily, the door was unlocked. In 
less than a minute she had reached the kitchen and 
opened the oven. Aunt Polly’s cherry pie was burned 
to a crisp charcoal, and Rosemary was nearly suffocated 
by the cloud of sooty smoke. 

“This is all very queer,” Rosemary thought. “I won¬ 
der what has happened to Aunt Polly and Betty. I guess 


n6 Mystery Mountain 

children aren’t the only ones who run away from their 
work and forget their cooking.” 

She ran upstairs and called, but the house was empty. 
She then ran outside and looked searchingly up and 
down the street. Two blocks away there was a large 
crowd of women and children gathered in a neighbor’s 
yard. 

Rosemary could see that Aunt Polly was the center 
of interest, and that she was talking eagerly and gestur¬ 
ing with her hands. And as Rosemary came near she 
could hear the words, but didn’t understand who her 
Aunt Polly was talking about. 

“The child is lost, that’s evident. Yes, as I said, she 
went out to find Betty, and that’s the last anybody’s 
seen of her. She must have evaporated or gone up in 
thin smoke, or something.” 

Just then Rosemary burst into the crowd, calling, 
“Aunt Polly, come home in.a hurry! Your cherry pie 
is burned to a crisp, and the house is full of smoke!” 

Aunt Polly turned and stared blankly, like a woman 
in a dream. Her face went pale, and for a minute she 
was entirely speechless, and then a broad smile over¬ 
spread her face. “Well, if my cherry pie’s burned to a 
crisp, why all the hurry!” 

The women were still laughing as Betty took Rose¬ 
mary by the arm and started back to the house. 


Under the Mullen Stcd\ 117 

“Where in the world have you been all this while?” 
Betty asked with great concern. “We’ve searched every¬ 
where for you. I’ve even been down to the dock to see 
if you were there.” 

“The trouble was,” Rosemary smiled, “that you 














II. 


GIFTS FOR BETTY 

By the time Aunt Polly reached the kitchen she was 
quite out of breath and her face was flushed, but before 
she could fully recover her speech she removed what 
was left of the pie from the oven, and then sat down 
to rest. 

Rosemary immediately began to explain, “It was like 
this, Aunt Polly—but first I want you to know that I’m 
very sorry, for it never occurred to me that you would 
think I was lost, and worry.” 

“I suppose it is silly,” Aunt Polly smiled, “for any¬ 
body to be scared about your being lost, when you can 
find your way everywhere alone in Chicago, but you 
can’t exactly blame me for thinking about your safety 
while you are visiting here.” 

“I was just so curious that I couldn’t endure it a min¬ 
ute longer,” went on Rosemary. “I wanted to see if the 
monument Uncle Hiram told us about last night was 
still there; you know the one that Craig Harding set 

118 



n 9 


Gifts for Betty 

up with the bronze inscription about carpenters build¬ 
ing the castle and God making the mountain and the 
lake. And so I did the only thing possible under the 
circumstances, especially since no one would tell me: 
I went up alone and made a personal investigation.” 

“My stars, child,” Aunt Polly exclaimed, “you didn’t 
visit the Old Man of the Mountain alone!” 

Betty, who had been cleaning the kitchen as she lis¬ 
tened, looked up in surprise, and showed by her expres¬ 
sion that she, too, was greatly excited. 

“But there’s nothing at all to be nervous about, Aunt 
Polly,” Rosemary continued, “for everything was as 
quiet as death except for the leaves on the poplar trees 
and an impudent chattering red squirrel. And sure 
enough the monument was there, only it had toppled 
over. It looked as if a bolt of lightning had only just 
split open the cement base.” 

“Personal investigation! My sakes alive, that’s the 
Brown of it! ” Aunt Polly laughed. “When your father 
was a boy around this town, he was always investigating 
something or other and keeping his family in hot water 
until they were about crazy most of the time.” 

“But wouldn’t you rather that I go and see for myself 
than die of curiosity?” 

“I’d very much rather you’d pay some attention to 
your own personal safety.” 


120 Mystery Mountain 

“But when I tell Daddy-Doc how I went when every¬ 
body else was afraid of the place, he’ll surely be proud 
of me.” 

“You have yet to learn the difference between being 
brave and foolhardy,” Aunt Polly cautioned, “and you 
had better let me know before you set out on another 
such wild goose chase.” 

“I didn’t mean any harm, Aunt Polly, and I didn’t 
decide to go until after I started to find Betty; truly, I 
didn’t.” 

“Well, don’t let it happen again, for cherry pies don’t 
exactly grow on every bush, and besides I don’t want 
to be scared out of a year’s growth every day.” 

“I’m very sorry I was the cause of your worry, and 
I’ll be more careful next time,” promised Rosemary. 

“Well, then, we won’t worry any more about it and, 
as your Uncle Hiram says, we’ll just write it off the 
record and forget it.” 

With this weighty matter settled, Aunt Polly’s 
thoughts naturally turned to the noonday meal. In a 
spirit of playful banter she announced, “Well, Rosemary 
and Betty, I think we’ll have precious little for dinner, 
as far as I can see, with the pie burned up and the 
morning worse than wasted.” 

Rosemary entirely missed her aunt’s humor and in¬ 
terrupted her quickly. “Oh, I’m so glad, for now I can 


121 


Gifts for Betty 

invite you and Betty down to the hotel for dinner. 
Daddy-Doc gave me extra money for just this sort of 
thing, and he told me I must be sure to take you out 
somewhere very often, either to the movies or to dinner, 
but I seem to be forgetting almost everything he told 
me. This is the first time it’s popped into my head.” 

Rosemary was so delightfully truthful and sweet and 
serious about everything that her Aunt Polly loved her. 

“But Rosemary,” Aunt Polly replied, “I was only 
fooling. Why, I wouldn’t tramp up and down this 
mountain again today for forty hotel dinners. I have 
to be careful about my rheumatism now and then.” 

“We can call a taxi,” Rosemary insisted. 

“Taxi, nonsense,! Didn’t I tell you yesterday I 
wouldn’t trust myself to ride up and down this moun¬ 
tain in such a crazy contraption? And if we don’t have 
something for dinner, it will be the first time in twenty 
years. One cherry pie more or less won’t quite put us 
out of house and home.” As Aunt Polly talked, she 
began to prepare the meal. 

While Aunt Polly bustled about the kitchen, the girls 
went upstairs to Betty’s room. On the way, Betty whis¬ 
pered to Rosemary, “How did it all happen, and what 
did you see?” 

“When I finished breakfast,” Rosemary explained, “I 
started out to find you, and I heard you and Tyne and 


122 Mystery Mountain 

Tad and Hen talking rather loudly about something. 
Then suddenly the thought came to me that this was 
my chance to visit the Old Man, and so I went. On 
the way back, I overheard Tyne and Tad and Hen plan¬ 
ning to frighten me; but I was on my way down the 
mountain instead of up, and this gave them the sur¬ 
prise of their lives. After a while we laughed and made 
it all up, and now we’re good friends, and what’s more, 
we’re all going to put on a big home-made circus next 
week in Tad’s and Hen’s barn.” 

“We really weren’t as silly as we seem,” Betty inter¬ 
rupted, “for we were only trying to protect you. But 
if you have really, truly been to see the Old Man of the 
Mountain and are still alive to tell the story, I guess 
there’s not much to worry about.” 

Suddenly Rosemary remembered the piece of paper 
that had fluttered down out of the air. She looked closely 
at Betty and asked in a whisper, “Betty, can you keep 
a very great secret, one of the biggest secrets in the 
world?” 

“Why, sure I can.” 

“And will you promise, cross your heart, never to 
tell a single person in the world?” 

“I will,” Betty answered simply, making the necessary 
gesture. 

“This paper in my hand flew down from the sky 


123 


Gifts for Betty 

when I was at the top of Mystery Mountain. I’m sure 
it came from a girl about our age, for I heard her voice 
but couldn’t see her.” 

Rosemary scanned the page, noting the cramped but 
delicate handwriting. “Here’s what it says: 

I am Claribel Lee. I am imprisoned in a great castle on 
the top of a high mountain. The castle is kept by an old 
withered man and woman, who guard Claribel so that she 
cannot possibly escape. Claribel is writing this note and 
throwing it out through the topmost window in hopes 
someone will find it and come to her rescue.” 

Betty’s face filled with pity and wonder and fear. 
“Mighty lucky for you that the old man and woman 
didn’t happen to see you, or you would now be held 
with Claribel in the high tower.” 

“The only thing that worries me is how we are to 
rescue Claribel.” 

“We won’t ever try to rescue her ourselves. We’ll 
ask Dad what to do when he comes home this evening.” 

“We’ll try it first ourselves,” insisted Rosemary. “Oh, 
I know! Why couldn’t we fly a message, together with 
a piece of rope for a ladder, up to Claribel? Do you 
know where we can get a kite?” 

“Tad and Hen have a kite, if that’s all we need.” 
“That’s fine. We’ll attend to this just as soon as we 
possibly can. Remember, Betty, mum’s the word!” 
“Very well, I’ll remember.” 


124 Mystery Mountain 

“And now we can think of the circus for a minute,” 
Rosemary continued. ‘Til show you the first part of 
my solo dance.” 

Rosemary danced with such abandon that her body 
seemed as flexible as a fresh young branch. Betty 
watched her, captivated by the grace and beauty of 
every movement. 

“Why, you’re a poem in yourself, Rosemary,” Betty 
beamed. 

When Rosemary sat down, breathless, her eyes fell 
upon her trunk, and there popped into her head an¬ 
other thing that she had completely forgotten. She 
excitedly opened the trunk, removed the rod, drew out 
the lower drawer, and uncovered a large soft bundle 
tied with fancy red ribbon and another smaller package, 
done up in a flowered green wrapper. 

“Do forgive me, Betty, for forgetting about these. 
My Daddy-Doc sent them with his best compliments; 
but so many things have been happening, one right 
after another, that I simply forgot all about these gifts.” 

With eyes as big as saucers, Betty began opening the 
packages with nervous fingers. When the first was un¬ 
tied, there lay before her a lustrous figured old rose silk 
dress with lovely lace trimming. In addition, there were 
silk hose and dainty lingerie. In the other package she 
found hiking boots and shining patent leather pumps. 


125 


Gifts for Betty 

Then Rosemary remembered the third bundle, which 
contained a stunning hat. 

Overcome with surprise, Betty sat down on the bed 
beside the lovely things and stared at them, while she 
ran her fingertips lightly over the silk. What an exquis¬ 
ite sensation it was to examine the perfectly blended col¬ 
ors and to be conscious of the delicate perfume that per¬ 
vaded everything. After a minute, Betty came back to 
reality, threw her arms excitedly around Rosemary, and 
kissed her. 

“They’re all so wonderful,” Betty exclaimed when 
she could find her voice, “but I never expected I’d have 
anything half so beautiful for my very own.” 

“The next thing,” Rosemary suggested, “is to see how 
you look in them. The proof of the pudding is in the 
eating, you know.” 

At first Betty objected. They were so beautiful that 
she feared she might spoil them. “We’ll wait till my 
dad gets home this evening; he’ll want to see them, too.” 

“There’s no law against your putting them on twice, 
is there?” Rosemary insisted. “Here, I’ll help you. Sim¬ 
ply kick out of your clothes this very minute.” 

A few moments later Betty looked at herself in the 
mirror and could scarcely believe her eyes; she seemed 
to have undergone as marvelous a change as Cinderella 
at the hands of her fairy godmother. 


126 Mystery Mountain 

It was not merely the clothes that worked the miracle. 
Rosemary had unbraided Betty’s hair and had fluffed 
it loosely about her forehead and over her ears. 

“Now if you had your hair bobbed, Betty, you would 
be perfect,” Rosemary complimented as she stood back 
and studied her cousin. 

“But my father wants me to look as his sister Miriam 
used to look when she was a girl my age,” Betty ex¬ 
plained, “and I don’t think he’ll like me any other way.” 

“Why doesn’t he wear a full beard then, the same as 
Grandfather Brown used to wear at his age?” Rosemary 
replied, quite out of patience. “According to the old 
photograph down in the living room, he surely did have 
a full crop of alfalfa! Just wait till I talk to your father. 
Now it’s time for us to go down and introduce you to 
your mother. She’ll do well to recognize her own 
daughter.” 

Down the stairs Betty walked with a stately grace, 
feeling that she was treading an airy pathway strewn 
with roses. When Aunt Polly looked up and saw her, 
she almost dropped the hot loaf of bread she was just 
taking from the oven. 

“Let me introduce you, Aunt Polly, to Miss Betty 
Brown,” Rosemary began in mock seriousness as she 
dropped a low curtsy. “This is your very own daughter 
dressed in her very own clothes.” 



“Let me introduce you, Aunt Volly” 











































































129 


Gifts for Betty 

“My goodness gracious, Betty!” Aunt Polly began, 
the pan of hot bread still in her hands. 

“These are Betty’s clothes, as I told you,” Rosemary 
continued, while her Aunt Polly tried to control her 
surprise and pride. “And when Betty has her hair 
bobbed, even you won’t know her without taking a 
second look. Betty’s the prettiest girl in all Marquette.” 

“But why don’t you say something, Mother?” Betty 
asked, turning slowly around in a glow of pride. 
“Wasn’t Uncle Will wonderful to send me such a beau¬ 
tiful outfit?” As she spoke, her fingertips played lightly 
up and down the silken fabric. 

“Well, bless my heart,” Aunt Polly finally smiled, 
“and won’t your father be proud of you, too. But it 
hardly seems possible that it’s you, Betty. Have you 
thanked Rosemary? You must get your pen and paper 
right away, and write your Uncle Will a fine letter and 
thank him for everything.” 

“I’ll wear this dress only three times a year,” Betty 
planned, “once on my birthday, and again on Easter 
Sunday, and then on Christmas. I’m going to make it 
last a long, long time.” 

“You’ll have to wear a brick on your head to keep 
yourself from outgrowing the dress, then,” Aunt Polly 
laughed. “But don’t be so afraid of wearing it, for I’ll 
bet that when your father sees how fine you look, he’ll 


130 Mystery Mountain 

be so proud of you that he’ll get you another outfit just 
as nice before this one is outgrown. You girls had better 
clear out now while I get the things on the table. And 
Betty, you take these new clothes off before you eat 
dinner, and then you can put them on again when your 
father comes home. My, but won’t you give Hiram the 
surprise of his life!” 

When the girls were back in Betty’s room, Betty again 
looked at herself in the mirror, and for the first time 
in her life she felt a sense of personal vanity. Turning 
this way and that, she studied herself from every angle, 
and what she saw didn’t seem at all real. 

“Now you know, Betty,” said Rosemary, “what it 
feels like to be dressed up to the minute. But you had 
better slip out of these clothes, for we won’t have any 
hot bread if you don’t, and hot bread is very important 
after a strenuous morning.” 

Just then Aunt Polly’s cheery voice came booming up 
the stairs, “Dinner is ready!” 

Everything tasted alike to Betty, and the hot bread 
and the fresh honey went unnoticed, for she felt that 
she had stepped out of the world of the commonplace 
and into a paradise of dreams. 


12 . 


THE CLOCK STRIKES NINE 

Uncle Hiram was indeed excited when he saw Betty, 
and exclaimed with admiration, “But you don’t mean 
to say they’re your very own, Betty. Turn around slowly 
so that I can see every side of you. Why, you’re the finest 
looking girl I’ve ever laid eyes on, and you’re too sweet 
not to be kissed! Now you’ll have to write your Uncle 
Will a long letter and tell him how happy you are. 
Upon my word, I can’t take my eyes off you!” 

“You don’t know how happy I am, Dad,” Betty 
beamed, almost beside herself with joy. 

Soon they were seated at the supper table, and Rose¬ 
mary could scarcely wait until Uncle Hiram had washed 
down the last bite of apple pie with his last cup of black 
coffee. As soon as he had pushed his chair back, smiling 
contentedly, she began. 

“You must keep your promise to go on with the story 
of the Old Man of the Mountain, Uncle Hiram, for I 
can’t wait another minute to know all that happened.” 

131 




132 


Mystery Mountain 


“I thought you’d had about enough of that particular 
story,” Uncle Hiram drawled slowly. “Your Aunt Poll 
says you ran off this morning without telling a soul, to 
make a personal investigation of the bronze inscription 
on the monument. And when she couldn’t locate you 
anywhere, she got out the whole neighborhood and told 
everybody that you were lost or maybe kidnapped. She 
even sent Betty down to the dock and sent word up 
where I was working, and kept me in hot water most 
of the day.” 

“I’m terribly sorry, Uncle Hiram, that I made so 
much trouble for you and Aunt Polly and Betty, but 
now my hunt for the monument is past history and can 
never happen again. Besides, nobody is going to worry 
about me again, for they’ve discovered that I’m a hun- 
dred-per cent Brown, which means that I can take care 
of myself. Anyway, I’ve promised to tell Aunt Polly 
before I go on any more wild goose chases, as she calls 
them.” 

“That may all be true enough,” Uncle Hiram ad¬ 
mitted, “but I figure that you’re likely to make another 
tour of investigation to find out for yourself if what I 
tell you is true. And you know, Rosemary, the Old 
Man’s not the kind of person that a girl of your age 
should visit alone, even if you are a Brown!” Uncle 
Hiram added with conviction. 


The Clock, Strikes Nine 


133 


“If I promise you that I won’t ever go alone again, 
will that make any difference?” Rosemary asked 
earnestly. 

“So far as I know, a mere promise never yet stopped 
a Brown when his deepest feelings were stirred. What 
you need, Rosemary, is somebody to add a half bushel 
of common sense to your constitution, so you won’t 
do anything so rash again.” Uncle Hiram smiled dryly 
as he got up from the table and walked slowly into the 
parlor and took his place in his comfortable rocker. 
Rosemary followed closely after him, still begging for 
the story: 

“Well, then, you may as well go on.” 

“Do you think I had better, Poll?” Uncle Hiram 
called. 

“No, I don’t think you should, Hiram Brown, if you 
want my private opinion on the matter,” Aunt Polly 
replied as she quickly finished the dishes and pans. 
Secretly she was just as anxious to hear the story as 
Rosemary, though she tried to conceal the fact. “But 
you know as well as I do that Rosemary is a Brown, 
and if you don’t tell her everything, she’ll likely as not 
run off again to make another investigation.” 

“I’m sure,” Rosemary laughed, “that I don’t want 
to be the cause of getting the entire neighborhood ex¬ 
cited in another fruitless search. It will be much sim- 


134 Mystery Mountain 

pier all the way around, Uncle Hiram, if you tell me 
the whole story. If you don’t, there is no telling what 
kind of wild caper my curiosity will lead me into next.” 

“You’re such a thoroughbred Brown, Rosemary, and 
there’s no doubt about it,” Uncle Hiram smiled dryly, 
quite at his wits’ end. 

“That’s just another reason why I should know, for 
being what I am, it will do me no harm to know every¬ 
thing.” 

By this time Aunt Polly had finished her dishes and 
now sat down opposite Uncle Hiram. She took up her 
knitting, and as the story proceeded, she punctuated 
each separate incident with an excited click of her fly¬ 
ing needles. Uncle Hiram slouched down in his chair, 
crossed his legs, and twiddled his thumbs, trying to re¬ 
call what he had said the previous evening. Rosemary 
and Betty sat side by side, tense with expectation. 

“Let me see, where did I leave off?” he asked un¬ 
certainly. 

“You left off abruptly at nine o’clock,” Rosemary re¬ 
plied without wasting a second. “You didn’t explain 
what happened after the disappearance of Harriet Fair¬ 
fax and Craig Harding.” 

“I told you that the story of Craig Harding got into 
all the papers, didn’t I?” Uncle Hiram asked pointedly. 

“Yes, you told that much, but nothing more.” 


The Clock Strikes Nine 


135 


“Nobody knew exactly what had happened, you see,” 
went on Uncle Hiram. “In the middle of the night a 
piercing voice had been heard pretty generally through¬ 
out the hotel. Nobody thought much about it at the 
time, for they simply took it for granted that somebody 
had either come home drunk or had had a nightmare. 

“No two persons later agreed as to what had hap¬ 
pened. A Mr. Espy, who was occupying the adjoining 
room, reported that he had heard, ‘Spare me, Craig 
Harding! Spare me!’ He rather thought it was a 
woman’s voice, but he couldn’t be sure. He also reported 
that there had been a struggle, and then a dull thud, 
thud, thud, that sounded like the crash of a cane against; 
solid ivory. 

“Mrs. Hendrickson and her daughter, who were in 
the room directly across the corridor, said that they had 
heard somebody shriek, but neither could remember 
any names, nor what was said. 

“Others in the hotel heard snatches of conversation, 
but no two persons had heard the same words. 

“The city police came out to the hotel at once and 
made what they called a thorough investigation. They 
looked around for some sort of evidence and listened to 
everything that anybody had to say. All the hired help 
talked freely, but each one had a different theory as to 
what had actually occurred. 


136 Mystery Mountain 

“Right after this, an old codger who looked like a 
hayseed from Podunk engaged a room at the hotel and 
sat in the lobby every evening, chewing his goose- 
quill toothpick and encouraging everybody to talk. ‘Yah, 
that sounds plausible,’ he would comment whenever 
anyone explained his pet theory, ‘but how do you ac¬ 
count for this?’ And when a person didn’t talk freely, 
the old hayseed would ask with a childish grin, ‘Wal, 
who do ye think wuz the guilty party?’ 

“After a while the police became suspicious of the 
old rube and arrested him on the theory that he might 
possibly be the guilty party himself, or else know who 
the guilty person was. 

“A few days later it leaked out that the old rube, 
when he was taken down to the City Hall, jerked off 
his whiskers and wig and flashed papers which proved 
that he was a Pinkerton detective, sent up from Chicago 
to work on the case. 

“From time to time, the Police Department was aware 
that there were as many as half a dozen detectives in 
town. Who was paying for this work the local police 
were never able to figure out. 

“Some of these detectives infested the hotel as guests, 
and others impersonated travelling salesmen. They went 
about among the merchants, pretending to sell various 
wares; but always they were asking questions and get- 


i37 


The Clocks Strides Nine 

ting people to talk about the mysterious disappearance 
of Craig Harding and Harriet Fairfax. 

“The strange thing about the whole affair was that 
nobody ever knew anything for certain about what had 
happened. The only story that was ever proved was that 
a dapper young man and a stunning-looking blond 
came into town on the 5:25 evening train on the day 
of Craig Harding’s disappearance. The couple had been 
seen by a number of people, loitering around the front 
veranda of the hotel during the evening, but nobody 
ever knew where they had come from nor where they 
went. So you see, this knowledge didn’t help a bit in 
clearing up the mystery. 

“It was only natural that things about the hotel 
should soon begin to fall into disorder. As soon as the 
boss cat disappeared, it was to be expected that the 
servant kittens would play when they should have been 
working. 

“Nearly all the summer boarders stayed on, partly 
out of curiosity and partly for fear they would be under 
suspicion if they left town. 

Things went on like this for exactly six weeks after 
the disappearance of Craig Harding. Then one night 
at midnight the guests were aroused by strange noises 
coming from the room of a Mrs. Grace Phillips. Every¬ 
one knew that this woman was of a very nervous dis- 


138 Mystery Mountain 

position and that she had been greatly disturbed fiy all 
that had happened. When these noises continued, the 
guests gathered in the corridor, and finally called the 
police. The door of the woman’s room was forced open, 
and Mrs. Phillips was found to be out of her mind. She 
was taken to the asylum at Newberry, and it was hoped 
that she would, in time, regain her sanity long enough 
to tell what had occurred. Rumors went around that 
someone had forced his way into her room and had 
escaped through the window. When Mrs. Phillips did 
regain her senses, however, her mind was a complete 
blank as to what had happened on that particular night. 

“After this incident, things happened rapidly. The 
next night three different guests reported that they had 
seen two different ghosts. 

“Old Captain Kennedy, who had lived all his life 
out-of-doors and who had been through every sort of 
adventure imaginable, said that he had seen, as plain as 
he ever saw anything in his life, a figure exactly like that 
of Craig Harding, and that this figure was accompanied 
by a woman in black. These two figures had stopped 
in front of the granite monument, looked at the bronze 
inscription for a full minute, and then had walked 
quickly away. Captain Kennedy wouldn’t allow him¬ 
self to be contradicted, but insisted he had a pair of 
eyes that he could trust absolutely.” 


The Clocks Strides Nine 


139 


Rosemary looked at Betty, remembering the copper 
box hidden beneath the mullen stalk on the lone moun¬ 
tainside. At that moment she made up her mind to 
lose no time in recovering it, for she was now more 
than sure that it contained important information. 

“The next day,” continued Uncle Hiram, unconscious 
that the clock was striking nine, “every summer boarder 
in the entire hotel cleared out as fast as if there had been 
an outbreak of the bubonic plague or smallpox. 

“By evening, only the cook and the general business 
manager remained in the hotel. What happened to 
these two, nobody ever found out. Along about three 
o’clock the next morning they came racing down the 
mountainside in their pajamas, scared out of their wits. 
They didn’t stop running till they met a policeman, but 
when they tried to tell what had happened, their ac¬ 
counts were so incoherent and contradictory that all 
anyone ever knew was that the hotel was surely 
haunted.” 

“Hiram,” interrupted Aunt Polly, “we’re as excited 
as children, and neither of us heard the clock strike!” 

Uncle Hiram rose from his chair, a dreamy look still 
in his eyes, and Rosemary and Betty awakened as if 
from a nightmare. 

“But this isn’t the end of the story, is it?” Rosemary 
pleaded in a tense voice. 


140 Mystery Mountain 

Uncle Hiram smiled vaguely, walked across the room, 
took the key from its peg on the wall, and began wind¬ 
ing the clock. 

“No, Rosemary,” he said, “the story’s hardly more 
than half done yet.” 

“But didn’t anybody ever come to live at Mystery 
Mountain afterward?” Rosemary asked excitedly. 

“Yes, on various occasions, but you’ll have to wait 
till another time to hear about that,” Uncle Hiram re¬ 
plied, secretly disappointed that he could not continue. 
“You already know enough to understand why every¬ 
body is sure that the place is inhabited by ghosts.” 

“Please, Uncle Hiram, can’t you finish?” Rosemary 
begged. 

“You two girls hop right off to bed now like good 
children,” Aunt Polly interrupted firmly as she put 
away her knitting. 

“Goodnight, and thank you, Uncle Hiram,” Rose¬ 
mary said, as she and Betty reluctantly started to bed. 

“My, but you girls do look sweet tonight, especially 
Betty in her new dress,” Uncle Hiram smiled proudly, 
“Goodnight.” 

“That clock always strikes at the wrong time,” Rose¬ 
mary grumbled as they reached the top of the stairs. 
“I don’t understand why Uncle Hiram keeps the old 
thing going!” 


i3- 

AN ESCAPE AT DAWN 


It was now bedtime, but Rosemary was wider awake 
than ever. She looked out through the window at the 
moonlit face of the Old Man of the Mountain, where 
the fairies were again dancing their slow, rhythmic 
dance. They sparkled as if thousands of fireflies lighted 
their steps along the slope of the mountain. 

Rosemary was worried about the copper box, won¬ 
dering if it was still secure under the mullen stalk be¬ 
neath the jagged granite rock. She must recover it as 
soon as possible, for undoubtedly it contained the clue 
to the Craig Harding mystery. 

Betty was trying to decide what to do with her lovely 
new clothes, for she knew it would break her heart if 
anything happened to them. She pulled out the bottom 
drawer of her oak bureau and relined it with fresh 
paper. Then she folded each garment, carefully smooth¬ 
ing out each wrinkle before putting it away. When she 
had finished, she looked around to see what had hap- 

141 



142 


Mystery Mountain 


pened to Rosemary, and sure enough, there she sat gaz¬ 
ing intently out the window. 

“Aren’t you ever coming to bed?” Betty asked a min¬ 
ute later as she stood in her pajamas ready to jump un¬ 
der the covers. 

“Yes, but please don’t hurry me,” Rosemary replied 
in a tone which indicated that she was making an im¬ 
portant decision. 

A few minutes later Rosemary came away from the 
window and began slowly to get ready for bed. She put 
on her pajamas, turned out the light, and hopped in 
beside Betty. 

Betty was already asleep, dreaming that she was in a 
land where every child was dressed in silk and had 
wings, and that she herself was the Queen of Fairyland. 

Rosemary lay wide awake, wondering how she could 
get out of the house without disturbing the entire fam¬ 
ily. She thought of every possible method of escape. 
She had read of people who knotted the bedclothes into 
a rope, down which they slid to freedom, and she had 
seen in the movies how others had jumped boldly out 
of windows, trusting to a kind providence that their 
bones would not be broken. There were still others who 
had climbed down trellis walls and rainpipes. There 
were a hundred different ways, but she couldn’t decide 
which to choose. She couldn’t think of using the bed- 


An Escape at Dawn 


143 


clothes, for that wouldn’t be fair to Betty. She couldn’t 
leap out of the upstairs window, for she would have to 
land on flinty granite rock. It would be quite impos¬ 
sible to climb down the trellis, because there wasn’t any 
trellis! 

The only practicable way was to open the door which 
led to the front veranda and then to climb out over the 
railing and slide down the porch post to the ground. 
When she had finally settled everything to her own 
satisfaction, Rosemary mumbled to herself as she tried 
to sleep, “I’ll get up and go find the copper box as soon 
as the first streaks of dawn appear.” 

With this momentous decision, Rosemary fell into a 
light sleep. She dreamed that she was searching every¬ 
where on the mountainside for the precious treasure box. 
Each loose rock and mullen stalk looked the same as all 
the others, and each one appeared to be the right one 
until she had made a careful search. She awoke with a 
start, realizing that she was utterly confused and feeling 
exhausted and discouraged. After going over her plans 
once more, she again fell into a fitful catnap. 

After several hours of restless tossing, Rosemary sud¬ 
denly sat up in bed, rubbed her eyes, and glanced at 
her wrist watch. It was a quarter past three. She 
climbed quietly out of bed and looked out the window, 
but the moon was nowhere to be seen. A deep purple 


i 4 4 


Mystery Mountain 


coverlet was stretched out along the mountain, and Rose¬ 
mary imagined that God Himself had gently put all 
the hills to sleep under His own soft eiderdown. The 
stars were beginning to pale in the first faint beginnings 
of dawn. 

Quietly slipping on her hiking clothes, Rosemary 
opened the door leading out to the veranda. It stuck at 
the bottom and came open with a squeak and a jerk, 
which she thought would surely awaken the entire 
household. She waited a moment in silence, and when 
no one stirred she slipped out and slowly closed the door 
behind her. 

For a full minute Rosemary stood entranced. Lake 
Superior lay at her feet, a glowing green emerald, while 
the clouds along the distant horizon formed irregular 
bands of blended color. It seemed as if an indistinct 
rainbow had become entangled in the meshes of some 
fairy fisherman’s great net. In the opposite direction, 
the tops of the mountains were still slumbering under 
their purple eiderdown. 

“My, but it’s cold,” Rosemary said to herself with a 
shrug, as a keen breath of clean air struck her face, “but 
I mustn’t waste all the morning here.” 

The next moment she climbed out over the veranda 
railing, dangling her legs this way and that in an effort 
to make contact with the porch post. Her fingers were 


An Escape at Dawn 


145 


cut on the sharp corners of the railing, and her arms 
felt as if they were being pulled out of their sockets. 
Still she couldn’t touch the post. In desperation she low¬ 
ered herself several inches farther and caught hold of 
the very edge of the veranda. This time her toes found 
the post, and she let herself down another inch and 
then another. It was now or never, she thought, as she 
loosened her grasp in the hope of catching hold of the 
post. 

A moment later she lost her balance altogether and 
fell to the ground. Luckily Aunt Polly had made a deep 
soil for her flower bed beneath the edge of the veranda, 
and Rosemary came down in the very center of the holly¬ 
hocks, flat on her back, with her heels in the air. She 
lay dazed for a minute or two, wondering how many 
of her bones were broken. When she tried standing and 
moving about, however, she found that she had been 
shaken up a bit, but not really hurt. 

With ever-growing excitement, Rosemary started at 
a lively pace up the side of the mountain in the growing 
dawn. After a time she stopped, out of breath, and 
begun to look about her for the three trees that stood 
in a straight line and for the boulder that was like a 
giant’s tooth. Soon she experienced the same confusion 
she had felt in her dream. Everywhere she looked she 
saw three trees in a row, and all the trees seemed 


146 


Mystery Mountain 


strangely alike, lifting their scraggly arms against the 
sky as if in prayer to the beauty of the approaching 
dawn. 

When she started on again, she began dodging this 
way and that, in a vain effort to locate her hidden trea¬ 
sure box. After a time she wandered far out of her 
course and stopped near a concealed path which led up 
to the Old Man of the Mountain. As she paused a mo¬ 
ment, she heard footsteps approaching, and hurriedly 
concealing herself behind a clump of juniper, Rosemary 
lay perfectly still. 

A gaunt, bent old man tugging at a heavy bundle on 
his back, came first, followed closely by a woman who 
was short and lean and feeble with age. She also had a 
bundle across her shoulder. The man’s heavy breathing 
could be clearly heard as he stopped long enough to 
exchange a few words with his companion. 

“Do you suppose anyone has seen us this time? We’ve 
never before been out so late in the morning.” There 
was an awed tone in his voice that was to haunt Rose¬ 
mary for many days. 

“I don’t think we’ve been observed,” the woman re¬ 
plied in hushed fear. “But let’s keep going.” As she 
spoke, she changed her bundle to the other shoulder, 
and the muffled squawk of a hen emerged from her bag. 

Rosemary caught a clear silhouette of the man’s face 



Rosemary lay perfectly still 



























































An Escape at Dawn 


149 


against the roseate sky, and it resembled closely her own 
mental image of Craig Harding. Whether she actually 
saw it or merely imagined it, she did not know, but she 
thought there was a long white scar across the man’s 
cheek. 

When the two strangers had disappeared, Rosemary 
sat up and breathed freely again. So this was it. These 
two old dried-up mummies, who were keeping Claribel 
a prisoner, had been out robbing chicken coops and 
gardens. Rosemary knew that she was one step nearer 
the solution of the mystery. 

“Where in the world do you suppose they came from, 
and who in the world do you suppose they are?” she 
asked herself as she again took up her search for the 
mullen stalk and the copper box. 

By this time the dawn was in its full beauty, and the 
entire sky was alight with fleeting, brilliant colors. God 
was turning back the purple eiderdown as He awakened 
the hills, one by one, with the white breath of joyous 
morning. 

Rosemary realized suddenly that she had no time to 
waste, for soon Uncle Hiram and Aunt Polly would be 
up and would discover that she was missing, and again 
the entire neighborhood would be called out to search 
for her. 

As the confused girl ran here and there in her frantic 


150 Mystery Mountain 

search, stubbing her toes against the rocks and scratching 
her hands and legs against the briars, she felt that there 
was but one chance in a million of locating her treasure. 
There was no system in her search, for she was running 
in every direction, wherever her feet happened to take 
her. 

By the merest accident, she tripped over a pine root 
and fell down beside a great mullen stalk. She looked, 
and sure enough, it was the one for which she had been 
searching. Pushing aside the leaves and sticks, Rosemary 
rescued the precious copper box. 

Without wasting a second, she tucked the box under 
her arm and hurried breathlessly down the mountainside 
to her Uncle Hiram’s home. When she arrived, the 
house was just as silent as when she had left it. It was 
then that she realized that not once had she thought of 
a plan for getting back into the house. 

She walked around the house and examined every 
window, but not a single one was open. She tried the 
kitchen door and, like a miracle, it opened. In her 
excitement over Uncle Hiram’s story, Aunt Polly had 
forgotten to turn the night latch for the first time in 
fifteen years. Softly closing the door, Rosemary glided 
silently across the kitchen and quickly up the stairs and 
into Betty’s room, quite unaware that Aunt Polly had 
heard her. 


An Escape at Dawn 

Noiselessly she slipped out 
of her clothes and into her 
pajamas, and was again snug¬ 
ly in bed, with the precious 
copper box safely under her £ 
pillow. Rosemary was as hap- v • 
py and excited as a girl could 
possibly be. _.v;J 






14 . 

THE MYSTERY THICKENS 


“Hiram! Sh! . . . Hiram, listen! ” Aunt Polly whis¬ 
pered nervously as she heard Rosemary tiptoe up the 
creaking stairs. “Don’t you hear that strange noise? 
Somebody’s broken open the kitchen door; don’t you 
hear the stairs creak?” 

Uncle Hiram awakened from his sound sleep, sat up 
in bed and listened, but could hear nothing. He was 
irritated. 

“It’s only your imagination again. You’re always 
hearing something or other, and it’s a pesky bad habit 
you’ve got waking me with a start as if the world was 
coming to an end.” 

“But I tell you I did hear something, and whatever 
it was, it’s still in the house. Likely enough it’s gone 
upstairs and into the girls’ room.” 

Uncle Hiram’s long experience told him that even 
though his wife was not a Brown, she was even more 
persistent, at least when it came to imagining an in- 


152 



i 53 


The Mystery Thickens 

trader in the house. He had on various occasions made 
a forced search without finding even a trace of a prowler. 

“Well, I’ll have no rest, I suppose, till I do get up.” 

He was now wide awake, and the early dawn was 
turning into broad daylight. He rolled slowly out of 
bed, drew on his clothes, and went into the kitchen. 
He tried the door, and much to his surprise it was un¬ 
locked. He could hardly believe that both he and Aunt 
Polly had forgotten to turn the night latch, but he 
quietly turned the key now so that she would not accuse 
him of carelessness. “That story about the Old Man of 
the Mountain must be responsible,” he mumbled to 
himself, for he knew that after he wound the clock each 
evening, it was his unfailing habit to see that the doors 
were secure. 

Uncle Hiram was still wondering about the kitchen 
door when Aunt Polly joined him in the search. Her 
eyes immediately detected the track of a wet shoe and 
two or three fragments of red clay near the foot of the 
stairs. 

“My sakes alive,” she whispered, “you don’t suppose 
the robber is still in the house! ” 

“No, I don’t figure anything of the sort,” replied 
Uncle Hiram, still somewhat out of patience. “Fact is, 
I don’t think anything is wrong.” 

“But the door must have been left unlocked, and it’s 


154 Mystery Mountain 

a wonder, Hiram, that we weren’t both murdered in 
our bed.” 

“Hush your nonsense, Poll. It wouldn’t surprise me 
one bit if Rosemary has been carrying on another of her 
investigations.” 

“If she has, it’s lucky she isn’t my girl,” Aunt Polly 
sputtered, “or I’d put her through a course of sprouts 
that would cure her of any more such foolishness.” 

Up the stairs went Uncle Hiram, and following close 
at his heels came the excited Aunt Polly with the stove 
poker in her hand. 

They searched the spare room first, and then looked 
in to see if Betty and Rosemary were both in bed. Betty 
was sound asleep, breathing with a long, slow, even 
cadence, but Rosemary lay perfectly silent, listening. 

“They seem to be all right,” Uncle Hiram smiled, as 
he stepped back to close the door. But Aunt Polly’s 
suspicious eyes had already seen the telltale shoes, still 
wet with the morning dew and stained with the red clay 
of the mountainside. She picked up the shoes and gave 
one to Uncle Hiram to inspect. 

“Rosemary,” said Aunt Polly sternly, “what in the 
world have you been up to this time?” 

Rosemary meekly sat up in bed, shook her bobbed 
hair back from her face, and answered frankly, “I’ve 
only been on an errand a short way up the mountain.” 


The Mystery Thickens 155 

“An errand at this time of the morning! ” Aunt Polly’s 
tone showed her displeasure in spite of herself. 

“Out with it, young lady,” Uncle Hiram added with 
a dry smile. “You see we’ve caught you redhanded.” 

“But it’s just a little secret of mine,” Rosemary re¬ 
plied, trying to be very polite. 

“Girls your age shouldn’t have any such secrets,” 
Aunt Polly continued, somewhat reprovingly. 

“But Aunt Polly, there’s nothing wrong with having 
an innocent secret, is there?” 

“If it takes you back to the top of the mountain,” 
Uncle Hiram explained, “we figure it’s wrong.” 

“But I wasn’t at the top of the mountain this time, 
Uncle Hiram, and besides, I haven’t any intention of 
ever going back to see the Old Man of the Mountain 
again.” 

“I’m sure glad to hear you say that, for your Aunt 
Polly and I both know that it’s for your own good to 
stay as far away from the top of Mystery Mountain as 
you can.” 

“You haven’t yet told us what you were doing out¬ 
doors so early in the morning,” Aunt Polly persisted. 

“You see it was like this,” Rosemary explained hon¬ 
estly. “On my first trip down the mountain, I left 
something behind which is very valuable. Naturally, I 
knew if I asked your permission to go back to get it, you 


156 Mystery Mountain 

would be afraid for my safety. So what was there left 
for me to do? The easiest way out was for me to go 
before you were awake. Of course I tried not to dis¬ 
turb you, but evidently I did.” 

“And what was it you left behind?” Aunt Polly per¬ 
sisted. 

“It was something very private and something I can’t 
tell you about just now. But I will tell you and Uncle 
Hiram everything after you have finished the story about 
the Old Man of the Mountain.” 

“I certainly hope you’ve satisfied your curiosity now,” 
Uncle Hiram smiled, “for we’ll all be nervous wrecks 
if this sort of thing goes on much longer.” 

“I’m terribly sorry if I’ve caused you more trouble,” 
Rosemary apologized sincerely. 

“Oh, no, it’s not that,” Uncle Hiram answered, 
“you’re no trouble at all, only a sort of riddle to us, for 
you’re so different from Betty and so supercharged with 
curiosity.” 

With the mention of her name, Betty wakened with 
a start. 

“What’s the matter now?” she asked innocently. 

“Oh, nothing much,” Uncle Hiram answered as he 
stooped over and kissed her. Then suddenly conscious 
of the passing of time, he moved toward the door. “My 
goodness, Poll, I figure we’ll have to start making break- 


The Mystery Thickens 


157 


fast right away if I’m to have my usual three cups of 
coffee in time to get to work.” 

“You’re right, Hiram, work before play. Or curi¬ 
osity either!” Aunt Polly grinned as she led the way 
downstairs. 

When they had gone, Betty turned anxiously to Rose¬ 
mary. “What is all this about? You were at the window 
when I went to sleep, and you’re here in bed when I 
awaken.” 

“True enough, but I made an excursion up the moun¬ 
tain while you were dreaming. It’s your mother that 
has the owl’s eyes and pussy’s ears. She doesn’t miss a 
single sound; she heard me when I sneaked back into 
the house.” ♦ 

“But where did you go?” 

Rosemary looked straight into Betty’s eyes, as she 
asked in a low, serious tone, “Can you keep another 
secret, cross your heart, without even telling a single 
person?” 

“Try me,” Betty smiled. 

“But can you keep a very great secret, that’s the ques¬ 
tion?” 

“Of course I can,” Betty assured her, solemnly cross¬ 
ing her heart. 

Rosemary then drew the copper box from beneath her 
pillow. Both girls looked at the engraving on top. 


158 Mystery Mountain 

“This box came from the inside of the boulde r that 
has the bronze inscription on its side,” Rosemary ex¬ 
plained in a whisper. “As I was bringing the box back 
with me after I first discovered it, I accidentally met 
Tyne and Tad and Hen, who were planning to scare 
me, and so I had to hide the box. You can’t blame me 
for not being able to wait any longer to get it, especially 
after hearing what your father said about the spirit of 
Craig Harding pointing with his cane. I couldn’t sleep 
because I was so worried that someone might find the 
box before I could go back for it. After tossing about 
most of the night, I simply went out while everyone 
was still asleep and recovered the box, and here it is.” 

“Why, Rosemary, you’re a wonder, really you are, 
and some day you’re going to be a Pinkerton detective or 
a G-Man or something.” 

“I might think so myself, if I had known how to get 
in through the door and up the stairs without waking 
your mother. But Betty, this box has very important 
papers inside it, if we can only find some way to pry 
it open.” 

“Why not let the box wait till after breakfast,” Betty 
suggested. “I’m just as curious to know what’s in it as 
you are, but Mother doesn’t like to keep breakfast wait¬ 
ing every morning.” 

With this, the two girls ran a race to see who could 


The Mystery Thickens 


159 


get dressed first, and Rosemary, in spite of the fact that 
she had to hide the copper box in the bottom of her 
trunk tray, was half a shoelace 
ahead at the end. 

Just as the girls bounded 
to the kitchen at one door, 

Uncle Hiram rushed out at the 
other. He was already five 
minutes late in starting to 
work, but by “getting a hump 
on himself,” as he said, he was 









































i5- 

THE TELEGRAM 

While Rosemary and Betty were still eating their 
breakfast, there was a loud clattering of the doorbell. 

“Who in the nation can be calling at this hour?” 
Aunt Polly commented as she stripped off her apron and 
went to the door. A minute later she called in excite¬ 
ment, “A telegram for you, Rosemary!” 

While Rosemary was rushing to the door, Aunt Polly 
again read the address, “Miss Rosemary Brown, care of 
Hiram Brown.” Surely somebody must be dead. Peo¬ 
ple didn’t send telegrams for any other reason. Aunt 
Polly’s feeling was so intense that she stood motionless, 
a large tear forming in each eye. Rosemary hurriedly 
signed her name, tore open the envelope, and read: 

Chicago, Illinois 

Miss Rosemary Brown 
Harkins Mountain Avenue 
Marquette, Michigan 

NO WORD FROM YOU STOP HAS ANYTHING HAPPENED STOP 
CAN COME SUNDAY MORNING IF YOU NEED ME STOP WIRE 
REPLY IMMEDIATELY 

Dad 


160 



The Telegram 161 

By the time Rosemary had regained her senses, the 
messenger had gone. She ran into the street to call him 
back, but all she could see was his bobbing cap as his 
bicycle disappeared down the mountainside. 

“Has anything happened to your father? He isn’t 
dead?” Aunt Polly asked in an awed whisper, when 
Rosemary came back into the house. 

“Why, no, Aunt Polly,” Rosemary smiled in amused 
relief. “But Pm terribly ashamed of myself. I haven’t 
kept my promise, and my Daddy-Doc has always been 
considerate and thoughtful of me. And to think that 
I haven’t even written him once since I arrived. I 
promised to send him a wire as soon as I got here. 
And here it is two whole days and nights. Oh, I’m 
so humiliated.” 

“And what does he say, then, if there’s nothing seri¬ 
ous wrong with him?” Aunt Polly asked as she became 
calmer. 

Betty’s emotions changed from dread expectation to 
amusement as she stood watching the scene. 

“Listen, Aunt Polly, this is the telegram,” and Rose¬ 
mary read it aloud. 

“Huh! And is that all!” Aunt Polly commented in 
disappointment. “Well, bless my soul, but I never heard 
of people wasting their money on telegrams like this 
before.” 


162 


Mystery Mountain 


“But it isn’t wasted money,” Rosemary explained. 
“I’m the only child my Daddy-Doc has, you know, and 
he has a perfect right to know what’s happened to me, 
and in a hurry if he wishes.” 

“Yes, I suppose he has the right to waste his money 
on you,” Aunt Polly smiled, “though I doubt if you’re 
quite worth all the expense,” she concluded, somewhat 
put out, as she went back to her kitchen work. 

As soon as Betty and Rosemary were alone, Rosemary 
said, “Betty, you’ll have to go with me to the telegraph 
office right away. I must send a telegram this very 
minute. I know Daddy-Doc’s worried to death about 
me. 

“But I don’t know where the telegraph office is,” 
Betty admitted, ashamed of her ignorance. 

“You don’t!” Rosemary looked at Betty in amaze¬ 
ment. 

“But you see, Rosemary,” Betty apologized, “I haven’t 
ever had to send a telegram, and besides, the only one 
my father ever received, that I can remember, was when 
Grandpa Brown died, and that was several years ago.” 

“I don’t blame you in the least, Betty, but we must 
start immediately.” 

Rosemary led the way into the kitchen where Aunt 
Polly was deep in the dishwashing. 

“We’re going downtown to send a telegram to Daddy- 


The Telegram 


163 

Doc, Aunt Polly,” Rosemary announced promptly. 

“We? You mean you and Betty?” Aunt Polly asked, 
not so sure that two girls could send anything as im¬ 
portant as a telegram without her aid. 

“Betty and I, of course.” 

“The telegraph office is on the corner of Front and 
Washington streets,” Aunt Polly explained, trying to be 
of some help. “You’ll see the sign in the window. 
You’ll know the building by the clock in the steeple.” 

While the girls were upstairs getting ready for their 
trip downtown, Aunt Polly commented to herself as 
she bustled about her housework, “I don’t see how in 
the world girls the age of Rosemary can be so sure they 
can send a telegram. Why, when I was that age I’d 
no more think of sending a telegram than I’d think of 
flying to the moon. Makes one feel like an old fogey, 
sure enough.” 

Soon the girls were on their way down the mountain¬ 
side, and as they passed Tad and Hen’s house, Tad 
called out, “Why don’t you ever come down to play? 
We’re going to have a grand circus here in our barn. 
Remember you’re going to give us your dance act.” 

“Of course we’re going to help with the circus,” Rose¬ 
mary replied, and then added, “But say, do you and 
Hen know how to make a box kite?” 

“Box kite! Sure, we’ve already got a box kite here 


164 Mystery Mountain 

in the barn. You come in and we’ll fly it right off,” 
Tad answered promptly, fascinated by the vivacious, 
self-reliant Rosemary. 

“Oh, we haven’t time just this minute,” Rosemary 
smiled. “We’ll be back later. We’ve an errand first.” 

“Yes, we’re going down to send a telegram to Rose¬ 
mary’s father in Chicago,” Betty announced proudly. 

“You never are!” Hen answered skeptically. “You’re 
not dead, are you?” 

Rosemary laughed outright. “We don’t exactly look 
like ghosts, do we?” 

Tyne had overheard the conversation and came run¬ 
ning across the street so that she would not miss out on 
a single thing. She announced abruptly a moment later, 
“I’m going along with you.” 

“But do you know how to send a telegram?” Rose¬ 
mary asked with a suppressed smile. 

“No, not exactly, but I could soon learn, couldn’t I?” 

“Well, then,” Rosemary said with decision, “since you 
can’t be of any help to us, you had best stay here with 
Tad and Hen and help with the circus till we get back. 
It will take a lot of practice to get it ready for the 
public. Tyne, you help Tad with the tight-rope act, 
or try leaping through the hoop, or—” 

“I’ll do anything to please you,” Tad beamed with 
youthful ardor. 


The Telegram 165 

“Goodbye, Tyne,” Rosemary called over her shoulder 
as she and Betty hurried away. “You run right along 
and let Tad help you with your circus act, and Betty 
and I will be back before you’ve even had the chance 
to miss us.” 

For once Tyne’s bumptious nerve had met its Water¬ 
loo, and as the two girls went on gaily down to the 
telegraph office, Tyne looked after them enviously, say¬ 
ing, “Who’d ever want to send an old telegram when 
one can write a letter so much easier?” 

Tad with his eyes still full of the vivacious Rosemary, 
replied simply, “Sour grapes!” 

On their way, Rosemary said, “It’s really hard on 
one’s nerves to be as excited as I’ve been about the Old 
Man of the Mountain ever since I arrived. I’ve forgot¬ 
ten my good manners and have neglected my Daddy- 
Doc, and I don’t know whether or not he’ll ever quite 
forgive me.” 

“But what message are you going to send to your 
father?” Betty asked, her face full of the new signifi¬ 
cance that life had suddenly taken on. 

“Oh, I’ll just tell him the truth, I imagine,” Rose¬ 
mary replied with unconcern, fascinated for the mo¬ 
ment with the sparkling blue expanse of the lake in 
front of her. 

As the girls reached the foot of the mountain, they 


166 Mystery Mountain 

turned to their left into Lake Street. Betty again asked 
with added seriousness, “But won’t you have to be care¬ 
ful about the number of words? Dad once said that 
you had to pay ten or fifteen or twenty cents a word in 
a telegram, and you’ll have to watch and not use a 
single one that’s not really necessary.” 

Disregarding Betty’s suggestion of thrift, Rosemary 
turned her undivided attention to the scenery about her. 
“Wouldn’t you love to be out sailing in that big sloop?” 
she commented, her eyes full of wonder. 

“But aren’t you going to give serious thought to the 
telegram?” Betty repeated. 

Rosemary only replied, “Don’t you simply adore 
Lake Superior?” 

“Well, there’s the clock in the steeple,” Betty an¬ 
nounced with a feeling of importance at being the guide 
for such a nonchalant sender of telegrams. 

At last the two girls were in the telegraph office, and 
Betty was completely fascinated as the tickers noisily 
tapped out in code the personal and impersonal secrets 
of the world. It seemed uncanny to her, and she didn’t 
at all understand how they could do it. 

The clerk handed Rosemary a blank form, and she 
began to compose the message for her father. Soon she 
handed it to Betty, asking her opinion of what she had 
written. 


The Telegram 167 

“I think it’s fine,” Betty commented, proud of her 
growing importance, “but haven’t you used more words 
than are really necessary? Here are two words I am 
sure you can do without.” 

When it was finished, the telegram read as follows: 

Marquette, Michigan 

Dr. William D. J. Brown 
307 Kaye Court 
Chicago, Illinois 

I AM WELL AND HAPPY STOP HAVE BEEN BUSY EVERY MINUTE 
SINCE I ARRIVED STOP I AM TRYING TO SOLVE THE EXCITING 
MYSTERY SURROUNDING THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN 
STOP l'D LOVE TO HAVE YOU COME SUNDAY STOP HAVE LOTS 
TO TELL YOU ABOUT MYSTERY MOUNTAIN BUT A TELEGRAM IS 
TOO SMALL TO BEGIN TO HOLD IT STOP DON'T WORRY ABOUT 
ME STOP UNCLE HIRAM SAYS i'm ONE HUNDRED PERCENT 
BROWN AND CAN TAKE CARE OF MYSELF STOP LOVE 

Rosemary 

“That sounds wonderful,” Betty approved with deep 
admiration. 

“It will at least tell Daddy-Doc I’m alive, even if I 
have been absent-minded,” Rosemary added as they left 
the office. 



i6. 

THE IRON ORE DOCK 


“Well, that’s finished,” Rosemary commented as she 
and Betty stepped out into the street. 

“It isn’t half as hard to send a telegram as I thought 
it was going to be,” Betty admitted, drawing a relieved 
breath. 

Changing the subject, Rosemary asked excitedly, “It 
isn’t far to the place where your father works, is it? 
This is the best chance we’ll have to go to the top of 
the iron Ore Dock and see it for ourselves.” 

“It’s so high that it makes your head swim,” Betty 
hesitated. 

“But we’re quite used to climbing, and I know Uncle 
Hiram will be glad to see us,” Rosemary spoke con¬ 
fidently, as she and Betty started down the street. 

“I’m not so sure,” Betty commented, trying to change 
Rosemary’s mind. “Dad hasn’t ever forbidden me to 
visit him, but I think he would have, if he thought I’d 
ever try it.” 


168 




The Iron Ore Doc\ 


169 


“But Uncle Hiram will excuse you for my sake. He’ll 
realize that it’s his duty to show a visitor all the sights. 
And besides, I’m simply crazy to see how the Old Man 
of the Mountain looks from the dock.” 

The girls were now walking down Front Street, and 
their conversation was interrupted by the loud chugging 
of a railroad engine from an overhead bridge. 

“There goes another train load of iron ore out on the 
dock,” Betty explained. “If we’re actually going to 
climb to the top of the dock, we’ll have to turn here 
toward the lake.” 

“Of course we’re going to visit Uncle Hiram,” Rose¬ 
mary replied happily, as she took Betty’s hand and led 
her into the narrow cross-street. 

Soon the girls were climbing the first long flight of 
steel steps that began the zigzag course up and up along 
the side of the towering dock, like a fire escape on a 
skyscraper. Rosemary was ahead, hurrying upward. 

Betty followed as best she could. There was nothing 
solid for her eyes to rest upon, as she looked down be¬ 
tween the steel treads into dizzy space. Her head was 
beginning to feel as light as a balloon. She feared that 
she could never get to the top, but she knew that it was 
impossible to stop Rosemary. 

Finally, when she was almost out of breath, Betty 
called, “Rosemary, wait! Please wait!” 


170 Mystery Mountain 

Rosemary sat down on a landing, where she happened 
to be at the moment, and looked about her. What fun 
it would be, she thought, if one could step off into space 
and float gradually into the clouds. When Betty reached 
the landing, she sat down, trembling, beside Rosemary, 
clutching the rail with her hand, for she felt weak and 
dizzy. “Do you think we’ll ever reach the top?” she 
whispered hoarsely. 

“Certainly,” Rosemary smiled as she looked upward. 
“There are only nine more flights of stairs, and we’ve 
already climbed five.” 

“Nine more!” Betty gasped, “and there are twenty- 
four steps to each flight, for I’ve counted them. Already 
I feel all shaky and trembly.” 

“I feel as if I could climb and climb forever,” Rose¬ 
mary smiled. “All you’ve got to do, Betty, is to look 
up and not down, out and not in. Come, take my hand.” 

Betty stood up nervously, clutching Rosemary’s hand 
and the railing, and together they slowly climbed up¬ 
ward. Betty’s courage had entirely deserted her, but in 
Rosemary’s heart there was a lilting song of wide, free 
spaces. 

“We’re making progress,” Rosemary grinned as they 
reached the next platform. “Betty, I’d give a million 
dollars to be a bird. If only I had the wings of that 
herring gull, I’d sail and sail, up and up into the blue 





Together they slowly 


climbed upward 






























i73 


The Iron Ore Doc\ 

heavens. Wouldn’t it be thrilling to ride on one of 
those fluffy, golden clouds!” 

“But don’t you try jumping off these crazy steps,” 
Betty cautioned with chattering teeth, clinging tighter 
to Rosemary’s hand. “If only you weren’t so foolhardy, 
I wouldn’t be half so afraid.” 

Betty’s eyes were now blurred from looking so closely 
at the small rectangles of empty space between the steps. 
She had never before been so high above the ground, 
and she was vowing to herself that if ever she got down 
alive, she would never be so foolish again. 

At last they were safe on the solid surface at the top 
of the great dock, a hundred and fifty feet above the 
water. 

“It makes me feel as lighthearted as a bird,” Rose¬ 
mary shouted, looking joyously about her, her arms out¬ 
spread like wings. 

“I wish I didn’t feel so dizzy and weak,” Betty mur¬ 
mured. 

“You’re such a funny girl, Betty,” Rosemary laughed. 

“And you’re funnier still,” Betty smiled with a wry 
twist of her mouth, “but as Mother says, we’re each of 
us just as God made us, and that’s that.” 

The top of the dock was a complete new world within 
itself, separate and apart. Three railroad tracks ran 
parallel, with a wide platform on either side. Beneath 


174 Mystery Mountain 

these were rows of great pockets, into which trainload 
after trainload of iron ore was dumped. An army of 
men, with long wooden poles, prodded the clinging ore 
from the cars after the bottoms had been tripped. With 
a clanging roar, the ore leaped into the dock pockets and 
raised a cloud of reddish-brown dust. This settled over 
the faces of the men, making them as coppery as Indians, 
and shining like polished rusty metal along the surface 
of their clothes. 

Another army of men, with much longer wooden 
poles, prodded the iron ore from the dock pockets and 
sent it rushing down the long inclined troughs and into 
the hold of a waiting iron ore freighter. Each new flow 
of ore resounded with a deep booming sound and sent 
upward a cloud of stifling dust. 

Here and there the switch engine pushed and pulled 
the creaking cars with an explosive grinding din, all the 
while giving off sooty, smelly smoke that settled in a 
clinging greasy grime over everybody and everything. 

Uncle Hiram was as busy as a beaver directing the 
men so that no time should be lost in loading the waiting 
ore freighter. Wherever he came, the men quickened 
their motions; but when his back was turned, they re¬ 
laxed their efforts. 

At first Rosemary was too excited with her immediate 
surroundings to look beyond the surface of the dock, 


The Iron Ore Doc\ 175 

but after a time the wind shifted and blew the smoke 
and dust to one side. She looked out across the deep 
indigo-blue surface of Lake Superior, and in the dis¬ 
tance saw a great schooner sailing slowly toward the 
bay, looking like a toy boat on a painted ocean. 

“Isn’t it wonderful!” Rosemary exclaimed gaily. 

“Yes, it is really pretty after one gets used to it,” 
Betty admitted, still too nervous to look far for fear 
she might tumble off into empty space. 

Soon Rosemary’s eyes turned to the Old Man of the 
Mountain. It seemed a long distance away, and from 
here it looked merely like a stately castle standing ma¬ 
jestically atop Mystery Mountain. For the first time, 
since Rosemary had come to Marquette, the mystery 
seemed but a far-away dream. 

“Do you suppose, Betty, that Claribel Lee is sitting in 
that turret this very minute, looking down at this dock 
and wondering what we two dots are doing?” 

“Maybe she is,” Betty agreed without enthusiasm. 

“You’ll have to help me remember to get rope for the 
ladder to rescue her before we go back to your house.” 

“I don’t believe we can ever free Claribel with any 
home-made kite. I’ve watched Tad and Hen wreck 
kites too often to believe the plan will succeed.” 

“But there’s one chance out of a hundred that we can 
free Claribel, and it’s worth the trial.” 


176 Mystery Mountain 

At this moment Uncle Hiram saw the two girls and 
came toward them, with a look of surprise on his face. 

“I figure you’re out seeing more sights,” he smiled, 
his face shining as if a bootblack had polished it. 

“That’s right, Uncle Hiram. The lake and the moun¬ 
tains are wonderful this morning! Wouldn’t it be fun 
to float about on one of those fluffy clouds or to sail 
gracefully through the air like a herring gull! And see 
how the shades of greens and blues keep changing in the 
water. Isn’t Nature wonderful!” 

Uncle Hiram was astonished at Rosemary’s imagina¬ 
tion. He worked here day after day in plain sight of the 
rarest beauty in the world, but his eyes and his thoughts 
were constantly on his work, and only on rare occasions 
did they ever stray from the grimy surface of the dock. 

“Even the Old Man of the Mountain seems majestic 
and beautiful from this distance and height,” Rosemary 
chattered. “But when you’re near, it’s entirely different. 
And that reminds me, Uncle Hiram, you’re going to 
tell me the rest of the story about Craig Harding this 
evening.” 

Uncle Hiram seemed not to hear what Rosemary was 
saying. “I’m surprised, Betty, that you ever ventured up 
here.” 

“We were downtown sending a telegram, and Rose¬ 
mary decided she wanted to climb to the top of the dock, 


and here we are ,” and Betty tilted her head proudly. 

“A telegram!” Uncle Hiram came to sudden atten¬ 
tion. 

“Yes, my Daddy-Doc wanted to know what had be¬ 
come of me,” Rosemary answered with unconcern. “You 
see, Fve been so completely excited about everything in 
Marquette that I forgot to tell him I had arrived safely, 
and so he wired for an instant explanation.” 

“Oh, is that all!” Uncle Hiram replied in a relieved 
tone, as his mind went back to his work. There were 
a dozen dust-covered Finnish and Swedish workmen 
leaning on their wooden poles and lazily watching him. 
“I see I’ll have to get back on the job and attend to 
business. Now be careful, and watch your step climb¬ 
ing down the crazy narrow stairway. And Rosemary, 
don’t take any needless risk!” 

With quick strides, Uncle Hiram vanished among 
the men. Rosemary turned again from the dock to the 
fleeting wonder and beauty of the natural scenery. The 
clouds had shifted and their colors had become quite 
different. For the moment the sun was hidden behind 
a cloud, and the tinting of the water and the sky was 
even softer and more fascinating. This was, indeed, a 
world apart. It seemed to Rosemary as if Nature had 
splashed her colors lavishly, in an attempt to please 
Rosemary’s own sensitive being. 


178 Mystery Mountain 

After a time, Betty lost her sense of fear and filled her 
soul with the beauty everywhere about her. “You know, 
Rosemary,” she confided, “I think I’ll make a poem 
about this when we get home.” 

“There’s beauty here to make a hundred poems,” 
Rosemary answered in a dreamy mood, as they still 
lingered. 

The descent along the dizzy zigzag flight of stairs 
seemed even more perilous than the ascent. The steel 
structure was like a frail spiderweb spanning empty 
space. There was nothing solid to support the eye or 
give any feeling of security. 

“If ever I get down alive,” Betty shuddered as she 
crouched and clung and felt her way, “I’ll let this be the 
last excursion of this sort.” 

“I’d like to come up here every day,” said Rosemary 
enthusiastically, “if one could only blow the iron dust 
and the engine’s grimy breath away, it would be a world 
of complete beauty, constantly changing but always 
thrilling.” 

At last the girls were again on the solid earth. Betty 
breathed deep and long as the intense fear went out of 
her face and the tremor from her knees. 

Rosemary now remembered her other errand. After 
locating the proper store, she and Betty purchased a 
bundle of rope and then started homeward. 


179 




The Iron Ore Doc\ 

On their way up the mountain, Rosemary commented 
cheerfully, “Now we’ll soon see what Tad and Hen 
can do with a box kite.” 

“Yes, we shall see,” Betty answered doubtfully, as if to 
say, “I’m afraid you’ll be sadly 
disappointed with the results.” 

It had, indeed, been a won¬ 
derful morning for both girls. 

Betty had learned that a tele¬ 
gram is not entirely magical, 
and Rosemary had made the 
discovery that Nature from a 
high vantage point on the wa¬ 
ter is strangely captivating. 











i7- 

A CIRCUS IN THE MAKING 


On the way back home, Rosemary and Betty remem¬ 
bered the circus and also the rope and the kite, so they 
stopped at Tad and Hen’s barn. Snooks greeted them 
with his silly grin and his tail flapped in wide, erratic 
circles like a bedraggled dust mop. Tad was busy skin¬ 
ning the cat on his newly devised trapeze, and Hen was 
practicing cartwheels and walking on his hands. 

“Where’s the rest of the show?” Rosemary asked in 
amusement. 

“Tyne is sour grapes!” Tad replied with a wry face. 

“Why, isn’t she going to do her act?” Betty asked in 
surprise. 

“She only wants to be coaxed,” Hen sniffed. 

“Well, then, you’ll have to do the coaxing,” Rose¬ 
mary laughed. 

“I will not!” Hen answered as he did another cart¬ 
wheel. 

“Betty, you’ll have to coax her,” Tad insisted. 

180 



A Circus in the Maying 181 

“Yes, I suppose I will,” Betty answered, willing as 
usual to undertake anything for the sake of harmony. 

“But what’s your act going to be, Betty?” Hen asked. 

“I don’t exactly know,” she replied modestly. “Per¬ 
haps we could dress Snooks to look like a Bengal tiger, 
and then I could be his trainer and put him through 
his paces.” 

“But you’ll have to make the jacket to put over 
Snook’s back,” Tad asserted. “And maybe you can also 
do a sword dance or something really exciting.” 

“I’ll decide what I can do,” Betty agreed. “I think I 
can work a few sleight-of-hand tricks.” 

“Rosemary, you need some more practice on your 
dance,” Tad interrupted, sitting on his trapeze as in a 
swing. He pretended to be very serious about the circus, 
but what he really wanted was to see the dance again. 

“Very well, and what’s the matter with this?” Rose¬ 
mary laughed, laying aside the bundle of rope and be¬ 
ginning to dance. Instantly she was transformed into a 
fairylike creature, all grace and beauty. 

“Now what’s your criticism?” she asked when she 
had finished. 

“You’re wonderful!” Tad beamed. “The only trouble 
is that your dance is too short. You’ll at least have to 
double its length when you give it on the circus pro¬ 
gram.” 


182 Mystery Mountain 

“You are very kind,” Rosemary smiled, “and I feel 
very flattered.” Then suddenly remembering her er¬ 
rand, she asked, “But how about that box kite?” 

“Oh, yes,” Tad answered, jumping down from his 
trapeze and running to the shed. The next moment he 
was back with the kite in one hand and a large ball of 
twine in the other. 

“Will it fly very, very high?” Rosemary asked, ex¬ 
amining it carefully. 

“High? I should say so!” Tad bragged. “Why, the 
man in the moon has to duck his head when we get her 
going.” 

“And we’ve a mile of string,” Hen added, “and be¬ 
lieve me, you’ve got to hold tight to keep her from get¬ 
ting away from you.” 

“Will it carry a load as heavy as this bundle?” Rose¬ 
mary asked. 

Tad tested the weight of the bundle first in one hand 
and then in the other and felt with his fingers until he 
was sure he knew what the bundle contained. 

“In a good wind she’ll carry this package like a 
feather,” he replied confidently. 

“Good!” exclaimed Rosemary. “And how much will 
you take for your kite and string?” 

Tad was so surprised that at first he didn’t know what 
to say. He looked at Hen for a signal, but Hen was 


A Circus in the Maying 183 

silent. The boys had traded a thousand trinkets with 
other boys, but they had never sold anything for real 
money to a girl. 

“You haven’t a knife or something you’ll trade, have 
you?” Tad stammered. 

“Will ten cents be enough?” Rosemary asked. 

Tad thought for a minute. “If you’ll make it a quar¬ 
ter, and then give Hen fifteen cents for his share, we’ll 
call it square.” 

“It’s a bargain,” Rosemary answered, opening her 
purse. 

“It’s not a bargain till I get a quarter the same as 
Tad,” Hen insisted. 

“Very well, here’s your money, Tad, and yours too, 
Hen. And it’s distinctly understood that neither of you 
is to breathe a single word of this to anybody. You’re 
not even to tell Tyne that we are flying a kite.” Rose¬ 
mary spoke very seriously, and the boys wondered what 
was in her mind. 

“You needn’t worry,” Tad promised with emphasis. 

“Of course Tyne does have eyes of her own,” Hen 
grinned. “But she’ll have to see for herself, for we’re 
not telling.” 

Without further delay, Rosemary gathered up the 
kite and the ball of string and marched quickly home, 
with Betty close at her heels. The next minute the kite 


184 Mystery Mountain 

and the string and the bundle of rope were safely stowed 
away in Uncle Hiram’s tool shed, on top of the lawn 
mower and the garden hose. 

They closed the shed door and started for Betty’s 
room by way of the kitchen. Here they encountered 
Aunt Polly, who at the moment was rolling out an¬ 
other pie crust. 

“I suppose you got the telegram off all right?” she 
asked, looking up from her work. “At least you’ve 
been gone long enough to send a hundred messages all 
the way round the world.” 

“Oh, yes, Aunt Polly, we sent the telegram without 
the least difficulty,” Rosemary answered blithely. 

“But really, Mother,” Betty added, “it wasn’t half as 
hard as I thought it was going to be.” 

“Then what are you up to now, coming into the 
kitchen on cat’s feet as if you were robbers or spies or 
something?” Aunt Polly asked, her eyes filled with 
laughter. 

“Oh, nothing much,” Rosemary smiled, “just now 
we’re on our way up to Betty’s room.” 

“But what kept you so long?” 

“We went to the top of the iron Ore Dock to visit 
Uncle Hiram,” Rosemary replied truthfully. 

“Well, I never in my life saw such a girl as you are, 
Rosemary. It’s the eighth wonder of the world that you 


A Circus in the Maying 185 

didn’t fall and break your neck. But you didn’t go up, 
too, did you, Betty?” 

“Yes, I did, Mother.” 

“It wasn’t Betty’s fault in the least, Aunt Polly,” Rose¬ 
mary insisted. “I had the hardest time coaxing her to 
go all the way to the top with me. If you could once see 
the gorgeous view of the lake and the mountains from 
the top of the dock, you would want to go, too.” 

“You’re surely one strange child, Rosemary,” Aunt 
Polly continued, as she began stirring up a batch of 
cookies. “What in the world won’t you be doing next!” 

“There are lots of things still to do,” Rosemary 
laughed as she and Betty started upstairs. 

“What kind of letter shall we send in the kite to 
Claribel Lee?” Rosemary began excitedly, as soon as the 
girls reached Betty’s room. 

“I don’t know exactly,” Betty answered with a blank 
stare. 

“Well then, think!” Rosemary suggested, her brows 
contracted in serious concentration. “Think hard!” 

There was a long minute of silence, and then Rose¬ 
mary announced with decision, “The letter needs to be 
written on a large sheet of paper so that Claribel can’t 
help finding it.” 

“Yes,” Betty agreed, “that’s right,” and she went to 
a drawer and found a sheet of red wrapping paper which 


186 Mystery Mountain 

she and Rosemary decided would be quite satisfactory. 

“And our letter needs to assure Claribel, the very first 
thing, that we’re her true friends and that we mean to 
help her.” 

“Yes, but won’t she be suspicious anyway?” Betty re¬ 
plied with feeling, “I know I would.” 

“Not if you were a prisoner the same as Claribel is. 
For then any change would be a change for the better.” 

“Well, perhaps,” Betty agreed without being con¬ 
vinced. 

“Suppose we begin, ‘We’re two girls just like you, 
Claribel.’ ” 

“That sounds fine,” Betty commented with fresh en¬ 
thusiasm. 

After half an hour of writing and rewriting, the let¬ 
ter was finally copied on the piece of red wrapping 
paper. The girls scanned it proudly, and then Rosemary 
read it to Betty to make sure there were no mistakes. 
Dear Claribel, 

We’re two girls just like you, Claribel. We want very, 
very much to help you. We know it must be very dread¬ 
ful to be imprisoned by two old withered, witch-like 
mummies. Remember we’re your friends, for we do so 
want to help free you. 

Now read these directions carefully: 

First: The bundle of rope you will find tied to the 
kite is for you to use in making a ladder. Tie a series of 
simple knots in it a foot apart, and then fasten the end 


A Circus in the Maying 187 

of the rope to your bedpost. Do this, of course, when the 
old withered witch-like mummies aren’t watching. 

Second: When the two old mummies are sound asleep, 
throw the free end of the rope out the window, and slide 
carefully down to safety. Only don’t slide too fast. If 
you do, you’ll come down with a crash and blister your 
hands, and maybe awaken the old mummies. 

Third: Hurry through the nearest opening between the 
steel pickets, and then run the shortest way down the 
mountain. 

Fourth: When you reach a barbed-wire fence coming 
down, stop and look around a bit. The house you will 
see nearest you will have a green-trimmed front porch. 
Well, this house is where we live, your two best friends. 
And be sure the house has green trimmings. 

Fifth: Walk right up to the side of the house nearest 
you, just as if you had always been acquainted. You’ll 
find a long pole lying under the window. Pick up the 
pole without making any noise, and tap the upstairs win¬ 
dow nearest the front porch three times. Don’t tap hard 
enough to break the glass. The three taps is the signal, 
and we’ll know right away that it’s you, Claribel. 

Sixth: Caution! If a man appears when you least ex¬ 
pect, speak to him as if you always had known him and 
he was an old friend. Just say to him: “How do you do, 
Mr. Hiram Brown. Excuse me, but I’m looking for Rose¬ 
mary and Betty.” This Hiram Brown is a very kind man, 
and is Betty’s father and Rosemary’s uncle. Of course 
this man will not appear unless you make a noise that 
awakens Rosemary’s Aunt Polly, and she sends him out 
to investigate. 

Seventh: When Rosemary and Betty hear your three 


188 Mystery Mountain 

taps at their window, they’ll be right out and bring you 
into the house. 

Eighth: Don’t be frightened at anything or anybody. 
We’re your very good friends, and the sooner you become 
acquainted with us the better it will be all the way around. 

Ninth: Don’t forget that we’ll be waiting every night 
till we hear your three taps at our window. 

Your best friends, 

Rosemary Brown 
Betty Brown 

“What do you think of it?” Rosemary whispered 
proudly. 

“It couldn’t be better,” Betty answered. 

Thus the morning slipped away before the girls were 
aware of its passing, and just as they were ready to go 
downstairs they heard Aunt Polly calling them to 
dinner. 



i8. 

THE UNCERTAINTY OF KITES 


Before Rosemary and Betty went down to dinner 
they hid the letter to Claribel in the pocket of Rose¬ 
mary’s blouse. 

“What are you girls planning for the afternoon?” 
Aunt Polly asked. 

“We’re going up the side of the mountain to help 
Tad and Hen fly a kite,” Rosemary answered with 
seeming unconcern. 

“Fly a kite!” Aunt Polly replied, with a mirthful 
twinkle in her eye. “Upon my word, but that’s a strange 
kind of game for girls!” 

“My Daddy-Doc said he wanted me to take plenty 
of exercise in the open air, and flying a kite will surely 
take me out-of-doors.” 

Aunt Polly’s eyes narrowed visibly as she wondered 
what was the real reason for the kite-flying. The secret 
weighed so heavily on Rosemary’s mind that she man¬ 
aged, only by the greatest effort, to keep smiling. In 

189 



190 Mystery Mountain 

spite of all she could do, her manner grew more and 
more nervous. 

“Be careful not to go too close to the Old Man of the 
Mountain,” Aunt Polly warned, as the girls left the 
dining-room and started out through the kitchen. 

“We’ll be careful,” Rosemary assured her, “and don’t 
worry a minute about us.” 

When the girls went to the tool shed to get the kite, 
they found Tad waiting for them. He had stolen across 
the back yards when Tyne and Hen were not watching. 

“You’re just the person we need to help us fly the 
kite,” began Rosemary. 

“That’s the reason I came,” Tad answered smilingly. 

“You carry the kite, and I’ll carry the ball of string 
and this other bundle,” Rosemary directed. She was 
now so excited that she could scarcely wait to get the 
kite in the air. 

“No, I’ll carry both the kite and the string,” Tad 
replied. “It will be easier this way. You carry your 
bundle.” Without waiting for further instructions, he 
started to lead the way. 

There was a narrow, winding roadway up the side of 
the mountain which, in the early days, had been used 
for carriages. This was now overgrown with weeds and 
in some places with underbrush, but it still offered the 
easiest and most direct path. Along this Rosemary raced, 


The Uncertainty of Kites 191 

while Tad and Betty came panting after her. At one 
place the road ran directly at right angles to the moun¬ 
tainside, and was for many rods sodded over with tim¬ 
othy grass. Here it was comparatively level, and when 
she reached this stretch of ground, Rosemary stopped 
and waited. 

“What about beginning the flight here?” she asked, 
when the other two had caught up with her. 

“You can’t fly the kite here; the wind’s in the wrong 
direction,” Tad explained as best he could between gasps 
for breath. “Come with me, and go slower,” Tad di¬ 
rected, “and I’ll show you the right place.” 

They kept on climbing farther and farther up the 
mountain. Betty insisted on carrying at least the ball 
of twine; but Tad was not to be trifled with, for he 
feared some accident. Once he did stumble over a pop¬ 
lar root and fell heavily forward, but by throwing his 
arm quickly to one side, he saved the frail kite from 
instant destruction. 

After a time they came to another level stretch in the 
roadway, and here Tad stopped to announce, “This is 
the only possible place to get the kite in the air.” 

Rosemary saw before her a long stretch of even ground 
and beyond, an abrupt cliff of granite rock. Three or 
four hundred feet higher towered the castle, which from 
this spot showed barely the tips of the turrets. 


192 Mystery Mountain 

“You hold the ball of string,” Tad explained to Rose¬ 
mary, “and I’ll take the kite and climb Old Baldy, the 
rock here ahead of us. Keep the string tight and unwind 
the ball just as I need it. When I whistle, you hold the 
ball in one hand and the string in the other and run 
down the road like a scared deer.” 

“Wait a minute,” Betty whispered to Rosemary, 
“you’re forgetting to fasten the letter and the bundle of 
rope.” 

“Oh, thank you, Betty,” Rosemary replied as she drew 
the letter from her pocket and began tying the letter 
and the rope to the kite. 

“What are you doing?” Tad complained, “Don’t you 
know that the lighter a kite is, the higher she’ll fly?” 

“This is entirely my business,” Rosemary insisted with 
plenty of self-assurance. “I’ve paid you for the kite, and 
you’ve promised to keep the secret.” 

“It’s hard to keep something when I haven’t got it,” 
Tad grinned. 

“That’s just as it should be, and you’re to say nothing 
at all about what we’re doing, do you understand?” 

“I’ll do anything for you, indeed I will,” Tad prom¬ 
ised worshipfully. 

When the kite was ready, with the bundle of rope 
and the letter fastened to it, Tad carried it carefully up 
to the top of Old Baldy, and Rosemary unwound the 


The Uncertainty of Kites 193 

string as Tad directed. When he whistled, Rosemary 
ran. But as she ran, she looked back at the kite instead 
of watching where she was going, and in a moment she 
had stumbled over a small rock and fallen headlong 
into a bush. 

Betty was watching the kite, too, and did not see 
Rosemary’s plight until too late. 

Tad quickly bounded down from Old Baldy and 
found that the kite, by good fortune, was none the worse 
for this first catastrophe. 

“You shouldn’t be so curious,” Tad scolded. “Next 
time look where you’re going, and the kite will take care 
of itself.” 

When all was ready again, Tad whistled and Rose¬ 
mary ran. The wind at the moment was perfect, and 
the kite quickly rose into the air. 

Tad raced down and joined Rosemary, and together 
they let out the string. The kite went higher and higher. 

“It surely pulls hard,” Rosemary beamed. “The string 
is beginning to chafe my fingers.” 

“Here, let me take it,” Tad offered willingly. 

“Or me,” Betty added, trying to be of some help. 

“No, thank you,” Rosemary answered with determi¬ 
nation. “This is my particular job.” 

Up and up the kite mounted as she released the tug¬ 
ging string. 


194 Mystery Mountain 

“It’s ever so much higher than the top of the Old 
Man’s head, isn’t it?” asked Rosemary, suddenly remem¬ 
bering Claribel. 

On the previous flight of the kite, the string had 
broken and Tad had tied it together carelessly. The 
three were delightedly watching it soar, when a sudden 
puff of wind caught the kite and tore the string at this 
weakened place. Thus released, the kite fluttered first 
this way and then that, and soon drifted downward. 

When she saw the kite lodged in the top of a tall 
Lombardy poplar, directly in front of the Old Man of 
the Mountain, Rosemary was in despair. Dashing up 
the rocks, she grasped the retreating end of the string 
and tugged hard, trying to free the kite. Instead, she 
merely implanted it more securely and broke the string, 
thus leaving her powerless even to get hold of it. 

“What can we do now?” Rosemary asked tearfully. 

“Nothing more today,” Betty answered, “but don’t 
be downcast, we’ll think up something we can do to¬ 
morrow.” 

“But can’t we do something immediately?” Rosemary 
persisted. 

“We‘ve done plenty for one trip,” Tad answered, not 
a little confused by the entire proceeding. He turned to 
lead the way down the mountain. 

“But we can’t leave the kite there,” Rosemary insisted 



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197 


The Uncertainty of Kites 

nervously, “We’ll have to climb the tree or something.” 

“Climb the tree, nonsense!” Tad replied out of pa¬ 
tience. “The only thing we can do is to make another 
kite, and the next time we’ll be sure the string is strong 
enough.” 

“Oh, but what will Clari—” Rosemary wailed, catch¬ 
ing herself just in time before giving away her secret. 

“What were you saying about Clara?” Tad asked 
curiously, and when Betty and Rosemary looked strange¬ 
ly at each other, he added, “Who is this Clara anyway?” 

“You promised faithfully, Tad, that you would never 
tell anyone a single word about what has happened,” 
Rosemary said in a high-pitched, nervous voice. “You 
know you’re going to keep your promise.” 

“Sure, I’ll keep my promise all right. You know Yd 
do anything in the whole world for you, Rosemary,” 
Tad assured her with a touch of young romance. 

“Yes, Tad will keep his word,” Betty said quietly, 
“never worry about that. But hadn’t we better be going 
back down the mountain now before Tyne and Hen find 
out where we are? They’ll be asking awkward ques¬ 
tions about what we’ve been doing.” 

“You’re right,” Rosemary smiled. “And thanks, Tad, 
for helping fly the kite. You’ve been a good sport about 
it all.” 

As they came near Betty’s house, each one reviewed 


198 


Mystery Mountain 


silently what had just happened. Rosemary again made 
Tad promise not to mention the excursion to anyone. 

A minute later, as the two girls entered Betty’s back 
yard, they turned to look again at the tragic kite that 
hung limp and torn in the high 
branches of the Lombardy 
poplar. Betty tried to soothe 
Rosemary’s feelings with a bit 
of homely philosophy that she 
had often heard her mother ex¬ 
press, “Kites are tricky things 
in the wind.” 


—•r 1 #' 














19 . 

TYNE INTERRUPTS 


When Rosemary and Betty entered the house, tired 
and discouraged, Aunt Polly commented cheerfully as 
she looked up from her work: “Well, I hope you’ve 
both had your fill of kite-flying.” 

“We have,” Rosemary answered soberly, “at least for 
today.” 

“You weren’t gone so very long,” Aunt Polly contin¬ 
ued, looking at them with a quizzical expression. 

“When the kite string breaks,” Rosemary replied, 
“and when the kite lodges in the top of the tallest poplar 
tree in all creation, there isn’t much left to do but come 
home, is there?” 

The sorrow and disappointment in Rosemary’s voice 
and face were so unusual that Aunt Polly’s mood 
changed quickly to that of a sympathetic mother. 

“I’m sorry that you had bad luck. You’ll learn after 
a while, Rosemary, that most of the kites people fly 
get lodged somewhere out of reach. It’s the way of the 


199 



200 Mystery Mountain 

world, but you’ve got to keep looking on the bright side 
and make the best of it, for that’s what the Browns 
always preach.” 

“Thank you, Aunt Polly,” Rosemary said, almost in 
tears, “and if you’ll excuse us, I think we’ll go upstairs 
and clean up a bit ” 

When the girls were in Betty’s room, Rosemary threw 
herself across the bed, and said with a sigh of discourage¬ 
ment, “Well, that’s that! I wonder what there is left 
for us to try next?” 

“Perhaps we’d better let Nature take her own course 
this time,” Betty suggested, as two large tears welled up 
in her eyes. 

“Aunt Polly is right, we mustn’t feel too badly about 
what has happened, for there wasn’t a thing we could 
have done differently. Kites are uncertain, tempera¬ 
mental creatures, and when they want to lodge in trees, 
that’s exactly what they do, in spite of everything. So 
there you are, and we couldn’t have prevented the calam¬ 
ity, no matter what we had tried.” 

“I’m glad you feel this way about it,” Betty answered, 
though with a distinct sob. “I did so little; I feel that 
I should have thought of something more to help.” 

“Instead of crying over what’s already happened, we 
had better begin planning our next move,” Rosemary 
said as her enthusiasm began to return. “We can never 


Tyne Interrupts 201 

wait for Nature to act, for Claribel has already been im¬ 
prisoned for years.” 

“Perhaps the copper box you found contains the solu¬ 
tion,” Betty suggested, catching Rosemary’s rising spirit. 

“Why didn’t we think of the box before?” Rosemary 
exclaimed, hurrying across the room to open her trunk. 
“We’ve been so excited and busy that we’ve almost lost 
our senses, for how else could we have forgotten this 
copper box!” 

Rosemary and Betty carefully examined the way the 
lid was fastened, but it fitted so perfectly that they 
weren’t exactly sure where the opening was. They turned 
the box from side to side, and Rosemary tried to pry the 
lid open, but she nicked her nail file and bent her mani¬ 
cure scissors in the attempt, and all she had to show for 
her efforts were a number of ugly scratches along the 
edge of the lid. Finally, out of patience, she placed the 
box on the floor and stamped on it with her heel, but 
even this made scarcely a noticeable dent. 

“Why not take the box to Tad and Hen and let them 
open it?” Betty suggested, when every effort had failed. 

“But we dare not let anybody know about the box,” 
Rosemary said firmly. “It’s a great secret, and if any¬ 
body should ever find it out, they would be sure to med¬ 
dle and spoil our plans. Besides, the box can’t help us 
rescue Claribel Lee, and until she is rescued, I won’t be 


202 Mystery Mountain 

able to think of anything else. In fact, I won’t even be 
able to sleep.” 

In her puzzled mood, Rosemary naturally went to the 
window, and next minute she called out excitedly, 
“Come and look, Betty. You can see the kite in the 
Lombardy poplar. It’s funny that it seems so small; 
really, it appears no bigger than a postage stamp.” 

“But I can’t see it at all,” Betty confessed after strain¬ 
ing her eyes. 

“It’s in the very top of the tallest tree, the one to the 
right.” 

“Oh, yes, now I see it,” Betty at length exclaimed. 
“It looks like a white pigeon against the green leaves 
and the blue sky.” 

While the girls stood thus gazing and wondering what 
they should do next, they heard a quick step on the 
stairs. Rosemary, in her haste to hide the box, dropped 
it. The box struck the floor on a corner, and the lid, 
as if by magic, flew open. A packet of papers started 
to tumble out, but Rosemary pushed them back and 
thrust the box under her pillow just as the door opened. 

“Betty, when are you and Rosemary coming down to 
help us with our circus?” Tyne questioned, stepping 
boldly into the room. 

“We’re very busy just now,” Rosemary explained with 
no show of hospitality. 


Tyne Interrupts 203 

“I like that!” Tyne bantered. “But you don’t look 
so very busy.” 

“Well, however idle we seem, we are very, very much 
engaged! ” Rosemary repeated with added emphasis. 

Tyne could not take the hint that she was not wanted 
and, uninvited, sat down on the bed, pointed her toes 
together, and spoke in loud accents, “You know I’ve got 
the slickest trapeze act ready. Really, I can skin the cat 
better than Tad or Hen or any other boy. And I can 
do cartwheels just like anything. I know you don’t be¬ 
lieve me, but it’s so! ” 

“You must be quite a professional to beat Tad,” Rose¬ 
mary commented without interest. 

“But even Hen himself says I’m better than Tad! 
And you know, I think Hen’s just a darling. He’s 
always saying something nice about a person. But Tad! ” 
Here Tyne stuck out her tongue to show her dislike. 
“I wouldn’t be seen alone with Tad for a million 
dollars.” 

“Tad seems a fine boy to me,” Rosemary smiled. 

“Huh!” Tyne sniffed in disgust. “You needn’t think 
you’re the only pebble on the beach. You think Tad 
likes you, don’t you, now? Even if he did go with you 
flying a kite this afternoon, he’d turn you down in a 
minute for Kitty Bentley. She lives down on Lake 
Avenue. You haven’t seen her yet, maybe, but she’s the 


204 Mystery Mountain 

slickest girl ever, or at least Tad seems to think so!” 

“You say you’re intending to do cartwheels and a tra¬ 
peze act at the circus?” Rosemary asked, trying to 
change the topic of conversation. 

“Yes, and I suppose you won’t even look at my act, 
at least not if Tad’s around.” 

“Tyne, if we weren’t so busy we’d be very glad to 
visit with you,” Betty finally remarked in despair, “but 
you’re only delaying our work.” 

“Well, then why don’t you go right ahead with what¬ 
ever you’re doing? I won’t bother you any, and I will 
either talk or keep silent, whichever you want me to do.” 

“But it’s a great secret,” Betty explained mysteriously. 
“Won’t you please go, Tyne? Another day, when we 
aren’t doing anything in particular, we’ll ask you in to 
spend the entire afternoon.” 

“Secret, pooh!” Tyne answered in disgust. “I sup¬ 
pose it’s some more nonsense you’re hatching up about 
the Old Man of the Mountain. Tad says you tried to 
send a rope and a letter up to somebody you call Clara 
this afternoon by the kite route, but you weren’t quite 
as smart as you thought. Your kite is this minute dang¬ 
ling from one of the poplars.” 

“Did Tad actually tell you that?” Rosemary gasped 
as her face went suddenly white. 

“No, he didn’t actually tell me, but he did tell Hen, 



“Won't you please go, Tyne?" 











































Tyne Interrupts 207 

and I overheard everything he said when he didn’t 
know I was listening. You may be from old Chicago, 
but you aren’t half as smart as you think you are!” Tyne 
grinned in open ridicule. 

“Don’t be offended, Rosemary,” Betty urged, trying 
to pour oil on the storm-tossed waters. “Tyne may be 
a bit outspoken, but she has her good points when you 
come to know her.” 

Rosemary wouldn’t listen; she turned and looked out 
through the window. 

“But I can’t go, Betty, till you’ve seen me do a cart¬ 
wheel,” Tyne continued. Before anybody could stop her, 
Tyne had stepped to the side of the room, tried first to 
stand on her hands and then, with a thumpety-thump, 
threw her feet into the air and crashed against the oppo¬ 
site wall. 

“That was pretty fine, wasn’t it?” Tyne beamed as 
she recovered her balance. 

“Girls!” shouted Aunt Polly from the kitchen below, 
“If you want to play games, go out in the back yard 
before you shake all the plaster off the walls.” 

“But now that you’ve seen what I can do, there is no 
need of my doing the act over again,” Tyne added as 
she sat on the bed again and continued to make herself 
a general nuisance. “I’m just waiting to see you go 
ahead with your work. By the way, how much will 


2 o 8 Mystery Mountain 

you give me to climb the poplar and fetch down your 
letter and your rope?” 

“I won’t give you anything,” Rosemary replied im¬ 
patiently, without turning from the window. 

“Tad and Hen told me how they each gypped you 
out of two bits when you bought their kite,” Tyne con¬ 
tinued, trying to be disagreeable. “They would have 
taken ten cents and have been tickled to death.” 

Rosemary’s face again went white to think how this 
impossible girl was getting the best of her; but there 
was nothing she could do without giving a show of bad 
manners herself. What would have happened next no 
one could have predicted had not the situation been 
saved by Aunt Polly’s call. 

“Hiram’s home! Supper’s ready! Come down right 
away! ” 

Rosemary did not wait for a second invitation but 
started at once for the dining room. Betty came down 
the stairs more slowly, and Tyne reluctantly followed. 

As Tyne set out for her house, she knew that she had 
spoiled Rosemary’s plans, whatever they were, and she 
was glad; but she also wondered enviously what the 
great secret could possibly be. 


20 . 


THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN 

While they were eating supper, Rosemary was so 
curious and fidgety that she could scarcely wait while 
her Uncle Hiram finished his pie and coffee. When 
he finally pushed his chair back from the table, she asked 
insistently, “And now you’re going to finish the story 
of what happened after the cook and the business man¬ 
ager were frightened away from the Old Man of the 
Mountain.” 

“Not quite so fast, young lady, not so fast,” Uncle 
Hiram replied with a dry smile. “You can’t hurry your 
Uncle Hiram. Eating a square meal is one thing, and 
telling a long-winded story is a horse of quite a differ¬ 
ent color.” 

Rosemary had worked herself into a state of fidgets 
by the time Uncle Hiram had leisurely walked into the 
front room. He took his place in his chair, slouched 
down in an easy position with his legs crossed, and be¬ 
gan twiddling his thumbs uncertainly. 


209 



210 Mystery Mountain 

Rosemary seated herself as usual directly in front oi. 
him, with her chin in her hands, and Betty pulled up 
another chair as close beside Rosemary as possible. Aunt 
Polly briskly cleared away the dishes so that she might 
take up her knitting again and hear every word of the 
story. 

“Well,” Uncle Hiram at length began haltingly, 
“after the cook and the business manager disappeared 
from the hotel, the place remained empty for a long 
time, or at least that’s what everybody supposed, for no 
one was brave enough to go near it. 

“People began to talk of the hotel as the Old Man of 
the Mountain, and as the years went on, they spoke of 
it more and more simply as Mystery Mountain. So this 
is the name that has clung to it ever since. 

“Then one night several months after the cook and 
the business manager had fled, Pete Delaney and Phil 
Leckstrum, two of the town toughs, decided that they’d 
make a night raid on the place and carry away every¬ 
thing valuable they could lay hands on. They each took 
a deer rifle, and were prepared to shoot any ghost that 
dared to show as much as a hair of his head. 

“But what actually happened leaked out only very 
gradually afterwards. The two men had climbed cau¬ 
tiously into the lobby through a window, and then had 
gone through the dining room with their flashlights, 


The Old Man of the Mountain 211 

and had even ventured into the butler’s pantry. They 
were surprised to find that all the chinaware and the 
silver had been removed, and that whoever took them 
had done such a good job that there was nothing left 
worth carrying away. 

“Then when they started down one of the large cor¬ 
ridors leading from the dining room to the office, where 
the safe was still standing, something suddenly hap¬ 
pened. Neither one of the men would ever tell exactly 
what it was. All that the town folks ever knew was that 
Pete Delaney’s hair turned white over night, and that 
Phil Leckstrum was in bed for several weeks with a 
bad case of nerves. 

“Well, after this occurrence, the imagination of the 
townspeople was so aroused that every time anyone 
looked at the Old Man, they saw a cold calculating face, 
with eyes in an endless stare that bored holes right 
through them. And by this time all the children in town 
were afraid to go near the place. 

“It wasn’t long after this, perhaps six or eight months 
later, that a man who called himself Craig Harding, Jr., 
blew into town. He pretended to be the lawful heir to 
the property and said that he had come to take it over 
and reopen the hotel. 

“Everybody promptly warned him that if he valued 
his life, it wasn’t safe to have anything to do with the 


212 Mystery Mountain 

place. They filled his ears with everything that had 
happened; but of course, he was too wise to listen to 
reason.” 

At this point Aunt Polly stopped her needles long 
enough to turn a significant glance in Rosemary’s di¬ 
rection. 

“Well, this Craig Harding, Jr.,” Uncle Hiram con¬ 
tinued, “bragged with a boisterous laugh that he’d al¬ 
ready met his majesty, the Devil, on three different 
occasions, and that the Devil had each time chosen to 
run rather than stand his ground. 

“That same afternoon young Harding carried his suit¬ 
case up to the hotel himself, for he couldn’t find any¬ 
body willing to deliver his luggage. As he started up the 
mountain, he laughed gayly and said he guessed he’d 
have to do without his trunks until he could hire some¬ 
body who wasn’t a coward to move into town. 

“In order to prove that there weren’t any grounds 
for their fears, he promised to come downtown next 
morning and report upon his night’s adventure. 

“The next morning at the appointed time a large 
crowd gathered to greet him, but young Harding didn’t 
appear. So along late in the afternoon the Chief of 
Police, accompanied by a dozen citizens with guns, 
went up the mountain to investigate. 

“When they’d gone as far as the steel picket fence, 


213 


The Old Man of the Mountain 

they found Harding lying on the ground with an ugly 
gash across his cheek. From all the men could observe, 
they thought that somebody had carried the wounded 
man out of the hotel and thrown him over the fence. 

“The men took Harding, Jr. down to the hospital as 
fast as they could. Some days later, when he had re¬ 
gained his senses, he said that somebody who was the 
spitting image of Craig Harding, Sr., had attacked him 
when he entered the hotel, and that was the last he 
knew until he had awakened in the hospital. 

“This last happening, of course, started the town buz¬ 
zing again. Some people argued that old Craig Harding 
himself must be hiding somewhere in the hotel, while 
others claimed, with equally sound reasoning, that the 
place was haunted by Craig Harding’s ghost. But every¬ 
body was too timid to investigate, and so there the mat¬ 
ter stopped.” 

“Aren’t you telling too much?” Aunt Polly asked. 

“No, I don’t think so,” Uncle Hiram answered, peev¬ 
ish at having his story hindered. “But there isn’t much 
more to tell,” he added, shifting to a more comfortable 
position in his chair. 

“Well, the next event that I recall which brought 
Mystery Mountain back on the front page of the town’s 
gossip list was the escape of six criminals from the Mar¬ 
quette Branch Prison. 


214 Mystery Mountain 

“After the officers had scoured the countryside for a 
week or ten days, some boys who happened to be play¬ 
ing up on the mountain accidentally discovered that the 
criminals had taken refuge in the old hotel. They car¬ 
ried the news downtown, and a few hours later a posse 
of officers and citizenry closed in on the place. 

“The criminals, who had a lookout posted, saw the 
posse coming and tried to escape by the rear entrance, 
but they were easily captured by the guards who had 
been posted behind the hotel in the deep pine woods. 

“The thing that started a great deal of additional talk 
was that all the criminals reported they were certain 
somebody besides themselves was living in the hotel. 
They had heard strange noises, and they had seen strange 
sights. Some folks thought there were two ghosts, and 
others that there was only one person carrying on like 
a ghost. 

“This report started the old argument all over again. 
One faction of the town maintained that Craig Harding 
himself was lurking around the hotel, while another 
faction contended that it was his ghost. They believed 
that he had been the victim of foul play and that his 
ghost would continue to talk until the wrong had been 
righted. 

“The last event of any great importance happened 
some years ago. A young girl by the name of Clara 


215 


The Old Man of the Mountain 

Bruce was kidnapped in Chicago and was held for a 
fifty-thousand dollar ransom. Her father was a wealthy 
business man and paid the ransom, but he was double- 
crossed and Clara was never returned. 

“According to the front page headlines of various 
newspapers, the young girl and her kidnappers had been 
trailed to Marquette, but here every trace of Clara Bruce 
had been lost. A strange woman in black, so the story 
ran, had brought the child up from Chicago on the 
Pullman and had gotten off the train here at seven forty- 
five in the morning. That was the very last trace that 
anybody ever had of the child. 

“The father at first offered a reward of five thousand 
dollars to anyone who would return his daughter, and 
later he raised it to ten thousand. He also hired detec¬ 
tives for a number of years until the greater part of his 
fortune was spent, but so far as I’ve ever heard, he never 
found either Clara or the kidnappers. 

“Of course the detectives camped around the Old 
Man of the Mountain at one time or another. They 
believed they had proof that someone was living in the 
hotel, and then later they decided that this wasn’t true. 

“They saw flitting glimpses of what looked like a - 
ghost, and they heard weird, uncanny sounds, but they 
were never able to prove whether the noises came from 
the empty creaking building itself or from someone 


2i6 Mystery Mountain 

who was hidden within and very much needed help. 

“These activities kept Mystery Mountain on the 
tongues of the local town gossips year in and year out. 

“And the more people talked, the more convinced 
they were that they were individually right in their 
theory, whatever it might be. 

“The outside appearance of the old hotel changed 
with the passing of the years. It began to take on a 
bleak, spooky look; and people never went near the 
building themselves, and they warned their children 
against going. 

“But occasionally, every year or two, somebody’s curi¬ 
osity gets the better of his discretion. Sometimes it’s a 
man and sometimes it’s a woman; but whoever it hap¬ 
pens to be, the person is sorry ever after.” 

“Well, Hiram Brown,” Aunt Polly interrupted with 
no uncertain emphasis, “you’ve already finished your 
story. Besides it’s now seven minutes since the clock 
struck nine, and so it’s time all honest, hard-working 
people were on their way to bed.” 

Now that the story was completed, Rosemary’s ner¬ 
vous excitement gradually relaxed. “Thank you so much, 
Uncle Hiram,” she smiled, “I know I’ve caused you a 
lot of trouble by asking for the story. It was so nice 
of you to tell it.” 

“You’re entirely welcome,” Uncle Hiram smiled in 


217 


The Old Man of the Mountain 

reply, as he turned to make sure that the kitchen door 
was locked. “And I feel quite repaid, for I know now 
that you’ll never again venture near the Old Man of 
the Mountain.” 

“You can trust me, never fear,” Rosemary assured 
him as she turned toward the stairway and said good¬ 
night. 

The girls were soon in their room, and Rosemary 
promptly began, “It’s certainly a relief to have the story 
finished. You can’t imagine how hard I’ve been trying 
to figure out the solution.” 

“And I’ve been trying hard, too,” Betty added, “but 
would you have gone exploring if you had known every¬ 
thing?” 

“You never can tell. But if I were sure I could rescue 
Claribel or Clara, or whoever it is that’s imprisoned by 
those mean old mummies, I’d go up there alone again 
this minute.” 





21 . 


THE SECRET PASSAGEWAY 

When the girls had recovered from the excitement 
of Uncle Hiram’s story, Rosemary again thought of the 
copper box, and brought it out from beneath her pillow. 

“Isn’t this exciting!” Rosemary whispered with bated 
breath. 

“I’m almost afraid,” Betty replied, “to have you open 
it at all.” 

“We must banish all fear,” Rosemary said with a dra¬ 
matic sweep of her arm. 

The two girls sat close beside each other on the edge 
of the bed, while Rosemary drew out the packet of 
papers. Originally the documents had been bound with 
rubber bands, and they were enclosed in a wrapper of 
tinfoil as a protection against moisture. 

When Rosemary, with trembling fingers, tried to 
unfold the tinfoil, it crackled and crumbled in a thou¬ 
sand fragments in her lap. Inside there was a covering 
of oiled paper and this, too, fell to pieces when she 
undid it. 


218 



219 


The Secret Passageway 

“This must be something very precious to have such 
elaborate care bestowed upon it,” Rosemary whispered 
with rising excitement. 

“Oh, do be careful,” Betty urged as her interest and 
curiosity became more intense. 

By this time both girls were wide-eyed with wonder. 
Inside there was still a second covering of oiled paper, 
stiffened and hardened by age, which they were able 
to unfold without breaking. 

The girls were almost breathless with suspense, and 
their minds were stirred with expectation over what 
they would find next. Inside this second covering of 
oiled paper there was another covering of tinfoil, which 
was still as flexible as the day it had first been placed 
within the box. 

“We’re coming to something very important now!” 
Rosemary whispered. 

“I’m sure we are,” Betty agreed, “but do be careful.” 

Inside this second wrapping of tinfoil there was an 
additional covering of delicate tissue paper, which Rose¬ 
mary carefully took off, certain now that she was at last 
coming to the heart of the great mystery. 

There proved to be two separate packages, each with 
a final inner wrapping of tissue paper. Rosemary opened 
the smaller one first, and a tintype likeness of a man, 
as clear as the day it was taken, looked out at her with 


220 Mystery Mountain 

mysterious eyes. An engraved calling card bearing the 
name Craig Harding, fell into her lap. 

“So this is you, Craig Harding, at last!” Rosemary 
exclaimed. “How do you do, my good man!” 

“I knew it was going to turn out to be something 
wonderful,” Betty said confidently. 

“And now, Betty, we shall see what’s inside this other 
package.” 

The second package proved to be a document written 
in a distinguished, though nervous hand. The paper 
seemed strangely like the crisscross chicken tracks in 
Tad and Hen’s back yard. After concentrating on it 
for quite a while, Rosemary began to read in a subdued 
whisper: 

To the World at Large: 

When this record is finally found, I, Craig Harding, 
shall long since have passed to my eternal reward. This 
document, in that distant day, may prove of some small 
value in clearing up what is sure to become one of the 
greatest of mysteries. 

“I knew it!” Betty exclaimed with awed quiet, “I 
knew it!” 

“Don’t interrupt,” Rosemary answered, reading on: 

Within my hotel, I have had constructed a secret pas¬ 
sageway leading by a hidden staircase to an underground 
vault. 



Rosemary began to read in a subdued whisper 


























223 


The Secret Passageway 

“It’s getting creepy and spooky!” Betty whispered. 
“It’s perfectly wonderful, you mean!” Rosemary re¬ 
plied. 

This secret passageway I planned for my own protec¬ 
tion. During my earlier years, be it here known, I lived 
in the Kentucky mountains. It was only natural that I 
should be drawn into the feudal warfare of that country, 
and on one occasion I led an attack and killed an enemy, 
Thomas Duckworth by name. The two of us had become 
personally incensed over the love of the same girl. Alas! 

I cannot bear to write her name! The scar across my 
cheek, the mark of Thomas Duckworth’s last bullet, I will 
carry to my dying day. 

The dead man’s clansmen swore immediate vengeance 
on me, and vowed never to relax their efforts until they 
had taken me. 

I fled, disguised as a woman, and by sheer good luck 
reached Cincinnati, and hastily lost myself in the crowd. 
However, I could not remain there, for my pursuers 
combed the city. 

Again I disguised myself, this time as a lame city-bred 
youth, and fled to Chicago. Here I lived for eight years, 
but not without a constant haunting fear, for I knew that 
my enemies would never give up their search. I changed 
my name to Craig Harding, though my rightful name is 
Wolfe Barclay. 

There was for me no peace; my days were passed in 
dread and my nights in sleepless vigil. I knew that some¬ 
one was always searching for me, and that surely they 
must find my trail, and I was always laboring to throw 
them off my track. 


224 Mystery Mountain 

When I happened to fall asleep, I would awaken in the 
middle of the night. I had ever the premonition that my 
end was very near, and around every corner I always 
expected to meet one of my pursuers. 

It was this ceaseless nervous strain that finally under¬ 
mined my health and led to my first coming to Mar¬ 
quette, Michigan. 

“It’s a sad story,” Betty interrupted. “Don’t you pity 
Craig Harding?” 

“Yes, in a way,” Rosemary answered, “but it all hap¬ 
pened many years ago, and what’s past can’t make one 
feel too sad.” 

When I had the hotel built, I made sure that two par¬ 
allel foundation walls of Lake Superior granite were con¬ 
structed across the entire front of the basement. These 
walls were each two feet thick, and there was a space of 
eight feet between them. 

The architect thought me a fool to waste money so 
lavishly, but I gave him and everybody else to understand 
that I meant to build a secure foundation for all time to 
come; and that since I was paying the bills, I should have 
the right to say how I wished the walls constructed. 

After the building was completed—except for the inside 
finishing work—I hired a master carpenter from Chicago 
and brought him to the hotel in secrecy. I instructed him 
to construct a hidden entrance to this vault between the 
granite walls. This he did in utmost privacy, and worked 
only when the other laborers were away from the 
building. 

When this master carpenter had finished, all I had to 
do was to press .a hidden button on the wall inside a 


The Secret Passageway 225 

clothes closet at the left of the fireplace. When the button 
was pressed, a section of the solid wall opened as if by 
magic, and this led to a hidden stairs, and these to the 
concealed vault. 

The workmanship was so perfect that no sign of the 
hidden passageway was visible from the outside, and there 
was no possible way to open the concealed door except 
by pressing the button. 

“Isn’t this the most thrilling mystery you ever read?” 
Rosemary grinned. 

“Yes, and weird!” Betty murmured. 

Later I hired a master stonemason to come secretly from 
Chicago to construct a series of stone-faced swinging 
doors. These were made so that each one shut off a small 
chamber within the main vault, and when they were 
closed, they were so perfectly fitted that they gave the 
appearance of solid masonry. 

These doors made it possible for me—should it ever be¬ 
come necessary—to hide myself or others from human 
pursuit. It may seem strange to you, reader, that I should 
be here detailing these secrets, but this document is in¬ 
tended as an aid in unravelling what will doubtless be¬ 
come an unsolved mystery. My hope lies in the fact that 
when this document is discovered I shall long since have 
passed beyond. 

“It’s really spooky,” Betty whispered as she took hold 
of Rosemary’s arm. 

“But it will help to clear up the mystery,” Rosemary 
whispered in high excitement. 


226 Mystery Mountain 

And now a final word to the reader who years hence 
discovers this document: Be of a forgiving spirit. For 
know that the writer of these words did all that he did 
in self-defense, to protect himself from his enemies. He 
was the victim of an old Kentucky family feud. 

Signed: Wolfe Barclay 
alias Craig Harding 

“Is that all?” Betty asked in suspense. 

“That’s everything,” Rosemary answered, “and it ex¬ 
plains the entire mystery.” 

“But it doesn’t say anything about Claribel Lee,” 
Betty corrected, getting up from the bed and sitting 
down in a chair opposite Rosemary. 

“Of course not,” Rosemary answered. “You see this 
document was written years before Claribel was kid¬ 
napped. And this kidnapping must have been the result 
of Craig Harding’s extreme poverty, for you see he 
couldn’t earn an honest living for fear of being caught 
by his enemies.” 

“You may be right,” Betty assented. “And do you 
suppose Claribel is being held a prisoner in the hidden 
vault?” 

“Only when danger threatens,” Rosemary answered, 
using her imagination. “At other times she is probably 
locked in one of the high turrets.” 

“But there isn’t anything further we can do now 
except to tell everything to Dad,” Betty interrupted. 


227 


The Secret Passageway 

“Yes, tomorrow evening as soon as he comes home 
from work, we’ll tell him our story, and he can help 
us rescue Claribel .” 

“We must go to bed now,” Betty suggested. “There 
are heaps of things to be done before we can rescue 
Claribel, and we will need clear heads in the morning.” 

“And to think,” Rosemary continued, entirely ignor¬ 
ing Betty’s counsel, “that we are in possession of one 
of the greatest mysteries of all time. How can we hope 
to sleep until we have at least planned Claribel’s rescue!” 

“But we can talk more quietly in bed,” Betty added, 
putting on her pajamas. 

“I’m going to sit down before the window for a few 
minutes first and look out at the Old Man of the Moun¬ 
tain,” Rosemary answered. “I’ll be seeing you in the 
morning. Good night.” 




22 . 

MORE EXCITING NEWS 


When Rosemary came away from the window and 
slipped into bed, she found that Betty, too, was so ex¬ 
cited that she couldn’t sleep. The two girls lay awake 
and whispered until after midnight, and as a result 
they both overslept the next morning. They were awak¬ 
ened when Aunt Polly opened their door and came into 
the room. 

“Rosemary!” she called. “Here’s another telegram! 
This time somebody must at least be very sick!” 

Rosemary sat up in bed and read the message. 

WILL ARRIVE AT MARQUETTE SUNDAY MORNING BY PLANE 

stop don't VISIT THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN AGAIN 

UNTIL I ARRIVE STOP LOVE 

Dad 

“Hooray! Daddy-Doc is coming!” she shouted. 
Leaping out of bed she threw her arms about Aunt 
Polly’s neck and gave her a dozen kisses. Then she 
danced back and forth across the room shouting, 
“Hooray! Just think, tomorrow morning! It doesn’t 
seem possible!” 


228 



229 


More Exciting News 

Aunt Polly was already beginning to plan the meals 
for Rosemary’s father. 

“You girls get dressed right away,” she said. “You’ll 
have to run an errand at the store. I’ve got to do a lot 
of baking, for there’s not a blessed thing in the house 
for Sunday dinner!” 

Quieting herself somewhat, Rosemary exclaimed, 
“Aunt Polly, you don’t know my Daddy-Doc, or you 
wouldn’t say anything about cooking a Sunday dinner.” 

“Don’t I remember how much Uncle Will can eat!” 
Aunt Polly grinned. “Why, he’s hollow all the way 
down to his heels!” 

“But what I mean, Aunt Polly, is that he’ll take us 
all down town to the hotel for dinner, so you mustn’t 
get excited about what we’re going to have to eat! ” 

“I never saw such a child as you are, Rosemary, in all 
my born days,” Aunt Polly laughed. “But I’ll have to 
be prepared for the worst. You never can tell about 
these men; they’re likely to want to eat any minute. 
Your Daddy-Doc will be hungry for a taste of home 
cooking, that I know, for he’s always been powerfully 
prejudiced in favor of my cherry pie.” 

“The Daddy-Doc I know,” Rosemary insisted as she 
finished dressing, “is always making strange faces when 
he hears anybody talk about things ‘as good as mother 
used to make.’ He says he would a thousand times 


230 Mystery Mountain 

rather eat at the hotel than at home; and since I haven’t 
eaten anywhere in Marquette except here with you, I’m 
sure he’ll want to take us all to the hotel for our Sunday 
dinner.” 

“Time alone will tell,” Aunt Polly replied with wis¬ 
dom, “but if I don’t get something in my pantry, I’m 
sure to be flooded with company! ” 

Aunt Polly returned to the kitchen, and Rosemary 
and Betty quickly followed her, excited over what the 
new day would bring forth. On their way to the store 
a few minutes later, they were delayed by Tad and Hen 
and Tyne. 

“When are we going to hold the circus?” Tyne called. 

“We can’t possibly have it before some time next 
week,” Betty announced importantly. “Rosemary’s just 
had another telegram from her father, and he’s arriving 
by plane tomorrow morning. And we’re all going to 
have dinner at the hotel, and everything! Isn’t it 
exciting!” 

“And you see,” Rosemary laughed, “Betty and I are 
on our way to the store to buy a lot of food for tomorrow. 
If all turns out as we expect, we’ll have our circus the 
first thing next Monday afternoon. What do you say to 
three o’clock for our opening curtain?” 

“That will be just fine,” Tad shouted happily. 

“Are we going to invite the whole town? And how 


More Exciting News 231 

much are we going to charge?” Hen asked eagerly. 

“Let’s have everybody,” Tyne said gaily. “Our 
mothers’ll like it best of all.” 

“But you don’t mean to have grown-up people?” 
Rosemary gasped, unable to imagine a group of mature 
women attending so childish a performance. 

“Of course we are,” Tyne asserted, anxious for an 
argument. 

“Sure,” chimed in Hen. 

“Why not?” queried Tad. 

“It’s the usual thing,” added Betty. 

And thus it was decided. 

“Have you thought about your act yet, Betty?” Tad 
asked with a critical gaze. 

“I’ve been too busy to think of anything,” Betty an¬ 
swered, as she pulled Rosemary’s sleeve and suggested 
that they go on to the store. 

“Busy! Snap out of it!” Tyne added with emphasis. 

“But when you’ve got to entertain your cousin,” 
Betty’s chin lifted high in pride, “and help send tele¬ 
grams and all—” 

“You might put on a magician act or something,” 
Tad suggested. 

“I’ll do some sleight-of-hand,” Betty promised, as she 
and Rosemary turned to go. “Yes, and I’ll put on an 
animal act with Snooks dressed as a tiger.” 


232 Mystery Mountain 

“And I’ll do a tightrope stunt besides my dancing 
act,” Rosemary added. “But we must dash down to the 
store now.” 

“Sorry you haven’t time to practice,” Tad called in 
a tone of disappointment. 

Rosemary threw him a lighthearted smile in reply. 
As she and Betty hurried on their way, Rosemary began 
eagerly, “Do you realize, Betty, what a lot of things we 
still have left to decide? Do you realize,” she repeated, 
as she stopped and turned around to look at the Old 
Man of the Mountain, “that we are the only two per¬ 
sons in all the world who know the real mystery? And 
now that Mystery Mountain has given up its secret, it 
doesn’t seem nearly so weird as it did before.” 

“It seems a lot more spooky to me,” Betty replied in 
a trembling voice. “Only think how unbearable it must 
be for Claribel Lee to have been a prisoner for so many 
years. Perhaps she is still being held for ransom by those 
old mummies. It upsets me every time I think of her.” 
As she spoke large tears welled up in her eyes. 

“Yes, we must rescue Claribel as soon as ever we can. 
Oh, I only hope she is safe and well,” Rosemary said 
hopefully. 

“Heavens! Rosemary, Mother told us to hurry! And 
here we are idling along as though we had all day.” 

“But we’ve work to do that is much more important 


233 


More Exciting News 

than helping with a Sunday dinner,” Rosemary asserted 
with a gesture of self-importance. “We must plan some 
method for making our secret known, for we can’t 
accomplish anything without first getting the right peo¬ 
ple interested.” 

“We’ll tell Dad first, as soon as he gets home from 
work,” Betty suggested. “He’ll be able to call the police, 
and they’ll make an investigation.” 

“You’re right, Betty,” Rosemary agreed. “Uncle 
Hiram must have the information first. There must be 
more than ghosts living at the Old Man of the Moun¬ 
tain, whose capture will lead to a rich reward. And 
tomorrow when Daddy-Doc arrives, he’ll help, too, for 
he’s not afraid of smallpox or flu or diphtheria, and I 
know he wouldn’t let anything like a mystery scare him. 
The Old Man of the Mountain,” Rosemary laughed, 
“will have the surprise of his life tomorrow, or I miss 
my guess. And when we’ve brought Claribel out of 
hiding, we’ll be celebrated detectives with our names in 
all the newspaper headlines.” As she walked along, she 
thought happily of the importance that would soon be 
theirs. 

When the girls finally arrived at Aunt Polly’s kitchen, 
laden with parcels from the grocery, they were greeted 
with her dry humor, “My goodness! If ever there was a 
pair of snails! Two girls are worse than half a girl when 




234 Mystery Mountain 

it comes to doing errands! Here it is nearly noon, and 
all my baking yet to do.” 

“Well explain everything, if you give us time, Aunt 
Polly,” Rosemary answered. 
“We’re anxious to tell Uncle 
; Hiram our story this time! 
:’ve much important business 
must be decided!” 

* “Important business, indeed!” 
Aunt Polly laughed. “When 
you’re as old as I am, you’ll 
know that there are few things 
in this world half as important 
H! as cherry pie!” 









23 . 

THE SECRET WILL OUT 


Rosemary and Betty could scarcely wait for Uncle 
Hiram to come home from work. They had so many 
things to tell him and so many plans to discuss. After 
he did finally arrive, they were impatient to get through 
with supper. 

While Uncle Hiram was finishing his last cup of cof¬ 
fee, Rosemary excused herself and went upstairs. She 
soon reappeared with the copper box and Craig Har¬ 
ding’s mysterious document. 

“Here’s a very odd box, Uncle Hiram,” Rosemary 
began abruptly, as she handed it to him. 

“Something Uncle Will’s sent me?” he asked, as his 
face brightened with expectancy. “He usually waits 
till my birthday.” 

“No, Daddy-Doc doesn’t know anything about this 
box, and it isn’t a present. You remember the day I ran 
away and visited the Old Man of the Mountain, and 
Aunt Polly thought I was lost? Well, I found this box 


235 



236 Mystery Mountain 

while I was making my investigation. You see a bolt of 
lightning had struck and overturned the monument that 
bore the bronze inscription you described. This box had 
been placed in the base of the monument that had been 
torn open by lightning. I simply pulled it out of the 
opening and brought it home, and here it is.” 

“You don’t mean it!” Uncle Hiram exclaimed in sur¬ 
prise, as he began to scrutinize the box. “You know I 
always sort of figured there must be some documents 
hidden away inside that monument.” 

“I know you did,” Rosemary replied, “and here are 
the documents, too. When Betty and I first opened the 
box, we found these wrapped in two thicknesses of tin- 
foil and two of oiled paper. You’ll find that this explains 
all about a hidden stairway and a concealed vault!” 

“Where are my specks, Mother?” Uncle Hiram asked, 
fumbling at the box and the papers. “Betty, hurry and 
bring them to me!” He was as curious and excited as 
a ten-year-old child. 

Putting his spectacles on with a quick jerk, Uncle 
Hiram unfolded the document and began to read. 

“Hiram Brown! Read it aloud!” Aunt Polly insisted 
as she looked over his shoulder. “I want to hear it.” 

Uncle Hiram obediently began at the beginning, and 
read in a slow, labored voice. He had scarcely finished 
when Aunt Polly again asserted herself. 


The Secret Will Out 


237 


“Hiram Brown, you’ve got to take that box and that 
document and this picture of Craig Harding down to 
the Chief of Police this minute. Upon my word, it will 
help to solve a mystery that’s baffled the whole nation 
for years! ” 

“Do you think I’d better go tonight?” Uncle Hiram 
faltered. 

“Of course you must! And at once!” Aunt Polly 
insisted with conviction. “There’s no other way out.” 

“Just a minute,” Rosemary interrupted. “There’s still 
more to be told. On the same visit to the Old Man of 
the Mountain, I heard the wail of a girl’s voice from the 
tower, and this letter fluttered down out of the sky and 
landed directly in front of me.” 

Uncle Hiram raised his spectacles to his forehead and 
looked at Rosemary with added surprise as she handed 
him the letter. 

“Isn’t it a shame to think that Claribel is still a pris¬ 
oner?” Betty wailed. 

“You’ve got to go to the Chief of Police without wait¬ 
ing another second!” Aunt Polly urged. “You’ve got 
to help organize a posse of men to make a raid on the 
Old Man of the Mountain and rescue that poor im¬ 
prisoned girl.” 

“That’s what Betty and I thought should be done,” 
Rosemary agreed. “The raiding party should be organ- 


238 Mystery Mountain 

ized as soon as Daddy-Doc arrives tomorrow morning.” 

“Well, upon my word!” Aunt Polly exclaimed with 
sudden understanding. “So this is the very important 
business you’ve been constantly talking about!” 

“Betty and I told you we would explain everything 
when the time came,” Rosemary replied. 

“But why did you fly that kite you told me about?” 

“You will never make a Pinkerton detective,” Betty 
laughed. 

“We tied a bundle of rope to it so that Claribel could 
use the rope for a ladder in making her escape,” Rose¬ 
mary explained. “But the old kite had to go and get 
itself caught in the very top of a Lombardy poplar tree. 
You see, Aunt Polly, we’ve had a good reason for every¬ 
thing we’ve done.” 

“You still think I had better take these things to the 
Chief of Police tonight?” Uncle Hiram asked. 

“Absolutely, yes! ” Aunt Polly exclaimed. 

“You will have to take Betty and me with you,” Rose¬ 
mary reminded him. 

“We are the star witnesses, and you can’t leave us 
out,” Betty added with eyes sparkling. 

“The girls are right,” Aunt Polly agreed, “and if I 
weren’t so slow and poky, I’d go with you too! ” 

“Uncle Hiram, we haven’t a minute to waste,” Rose¬ 
mary urged, starting toward the door. 


The Secret Will Out 


239 


“I’ll be right with you in a second!” 

A quarter of an hour later, the three were hurrying 
down town through the twilight. In their excitement 
Rosemary and Betty were a dozen paces ahead of Uncle 
Hiram, who was hustling as fast as he possibly could. 

“Don’t you think,” Rosemary called over her shoul¬ 
der, “that we’re pretty good detectives?” 

“Fact is,” Uncle Hiram answered proudly, “you’ve 
got Sherlock Holmes beat a thousand miles.” 

“And we’re surely glad you’re helping us,” Betty 
added, as she waited for her father to catch up. 

When they reached the corner of Front and Wash¬ 
ington Streets they came unexpectedly upon the Chief 
of Police himself. He was a lank, raw-boned giant, with 
beetling brows and immobile face. Rosemary and Betty 
glanced up at him, thinking he might be rather nice if 
he didn’t scowl so severely and if the gun on his hip 
didn’t look so menacing. 

Uncle Hiram called him aside and talked for a few 
minutes in a low voice. At length the big Chief nodded 
his head significantly and started with a long, rolling 
stride in the direction of the City Hall. Uncle Hiram 
walked at his side, while Rosemary and Betty followed 
close behind. 

When they were inside his private office, the big Chief 
slid down into a swivel chair behind a greasy, flat-topped 


240 Mystery Mountain 

oak desk, and motioned his visitors into chairs facing 
him. After he had deliberately lighted a cigar, he said 
curtly as though time were precious and must not be 
wasted, “Well, shoot the works.” 

“This, Chief, is my niece, Rosemary Brown from 
Chicago,” Uncle Hiram began proudly, “and this is my 
daughter, Betty. Both girls are naturally inquisitive, 
like all healthy youngsters.” 

“Yes, of course,” nodded the Chief, somewhat bored. 

“But here’s the point,” Uncle Hiram hurried on, 
“Rosemary and Betty became so curious about the Old 
Man of the Mountain that Rosemary ran off alone one 
morning, unknown to the rest of us, and made an in¬ 
vestigation of her own. You see I’d told her all about the 
granite monument with the bronze inscription that 
Craig Harding had placed in front of the hotel years 
ago, and she wanted to check up on me.” 

“You don’t say,” the big Chief commented with a 
slight show of interest. 

“Yes, and strange to relate, a bolt of lightning had 
toppled the monument off its base and exposed this 
copper box, which Rosemary picked up and brought 
back to the house with her.” Uncle Hiram got up stiffly 
from his chair and handed the box to the Chief. 

“You don’t say,” the Chief again commented, his face 
at last beginning to register real attention. 


The Secret Will Out 


241 


“And inside the copper box was this document, which 
describes in detail a hidden stairway and a concealed 
vault between the stone walls of the basement of the 
old hotel. Evidently this document was written in the 
neighborhood of twenty-five years ago, just after the Old 
Man of the Mountain was built.” 

“Just wait a minute till I take a look at it,” the Chief 
said, puffing his cigar nervously as he read. When he 
had finished, he asked in a cold, skeptical voice, “But 
you don’t mean to say, Miss Rosemary Brown, that you 
took this box from the inside of the monument your¬ 
self?” 

“That’s right, Mr. Chief,” Rosemary answered quick¬ 
ly. “You can see for yourself the engraving of the hotel 
on the lid.” 

The Chief examined the upper surface of the box 
under a magnifying glass, and then put a drop of liquid 
on a splotch of ink on the first page of the document 
to test its age. 

“Yes, and this is not all, Mr. Chief,” Rosemary con¬ 
tinued nervously. “There are people living at the Old 
Man of the Mountain this very minute. I saw them 
returning one morning before daylight, after they had 
been out stealing things to eat—chickens and vegetables. 
And besides, there’s a girl imprisoned there by the name 
of Claribel Lee, and we also have a letter that she wrote.” 


242 Mystery Mountain 

Rosemary was chattering so fast that the Chief didn’t 
have time to comprehend half that she said. 

“Here’s the letter she refers to,” Uncle Hiram added, 
handing it to the Chief. 

When the Chief had finished reading Claribel Lee’s 
letter, he addressed Uncle Hiram. “Are you certain, 
Mr. Brown, that these documents are genuine?” 

“I don’t know any more about them than you do, 
Chief,” Uncle Hiram answered honestly. “The most I 
know is that Rosemary says she found them. My wife 
says the girls have been acting strangely, and these seem 
to explain everything that’s been going on since Rose¬ 
mary arrived at our house for a visit a few days ago.” 

“I absolutely know they’re genuine,” Betty stated with 
a natural calmness that impressed the Chief. 

“Were you along when Rosemary found the box?” 
the Chief questioned her coldly. 

“No I wasn’t along that minute,” Betty answered 
with outspoken honesty, “but I do know that Rosemary 
visited the Old Man of the Mountain, for Tad and Tyne 
and Hen saw her while she was returning. They were 
up the side of the mountain that morning experiment¬ 
ing with a model airplane. And besides, Rosemary 
doesn’t tell lies, and I helped her open the box and take 
out the papers. They were wrapped with tinfoil and 
oiled paper that crumbled when we removed it.” 



“I absolutely \now they re genuine,” Betty stated 































The Secret Will Out 


245 


“But Mr. Chief, I don’t see why you doubt us.” 

“It’s my business,” the Chief commented rather stern¬ 
ly, “to find out the truth.” 

“If you wish,” Rosemary continued eagerly, “I can 
describe every detail of my discovery of the box. As I 
was returning to Betty’s house with it under my arm, I 
met Tyne and Tad and Hen unexpectedly, and I hid 
the box under a mullen stalk so they wouldn’t find out 
about it. Two days later I went back to find the box 
very early in the morning, just as it was getting day¬ 
light. That was when I saw the old man and woman 
who are holding Claribel Lee a prisoner. They were 
sneaking back to their hiding place, and they stopped 
for a minute near where I hid myself, and I heard them 
talk and also heard the squawking hen they had stolen.” 

“It sounds too much like an old-fashioned melodrama 
to be true,” the Chief commented. 

“Nevertheless, Chief,” explained Uncle Hiram, 
“we’ve come to ask if you’ll organize a posse of men and 
make a raid on the Old Man of the Mountain.” 

Before the Chief could reply, Rosemary added, “To¬ 
morrow morning my Daddy-Doc is arriving from Chi¬ 
cago by plane. I hope you’ll wait until he comes, for he 
can help us a lot. He’s not afraid of anybody or any¬ 
thing; why, he’s not even afraid of smallpox, flu, or 
diphtheria, so please wait for him.” 


246 Mystery Mountain 

This so amused the Chief that he laughed aloud, but 
Rosemary’s request came nearer convincing him of her 
truthfulness than anything else she had said. He swung 
partly around in his chair and asked, “And have you 
young ladies anything further to offer?” 

“I have,” Uncle Hiram interrupted. “We think you 
should raid the place tomorrow morning. You can sta¬ 
tion the men on all sides of the building to cut off every 
possible means of escape. You can enter the hotel, press 
the magic button, and before anybody knows what’s 
happening, you can handcuff the old man and woman 
and rescue Claribel.” 

“And likely enough,” Betty added, “somebody’ll get 
ten thousand dollars reward for finding Claribel.” 

The Chief leaned forward as he brought his fist down 
on the dusty desk. “It’s just barely possible that you 
have something here. There have been many strange 
things going on around this town for years that no one 
has ever been able to explain, and who knows, this may 
be the solution. Anyway, we’ll investigate tomorrow 
morning, and with the aid of as brave a man as your 
Daddy-Doc, as you call him, we shouldn’t have any 
trouble capturing everything in sight.” 

“You’ll find that Rosemary and Betty are a better 
pair of detectives than Sherlock Holmes,” Uncle Hiram 
bragged with a dry humor. 


The Secret Will Out 


247 


“Well, if we capture the old man and woman and 
rescue Claribel tomorrow, I’ll agree with you,” the Chief 
smiled as they started. “But remember one thing, and 
this is most important: You are not to mention a word 
of this to any living being. Do you understand?” 

“Betty and I will cross our hearts to keep the secret. 
We’ve already kept it for nearly a week,” Rosemary 
assured him. 

“Very well, good evening to you,” the Chief con¬ 
cluded as he arose from his chair and showed his visitors 
to the door. 

On the way back up the mountainside, Uncle Hiram, 
Betty, and Rosemary were much too excited for con¬ 
versation. 





24 . 

DADDY-DOC ARRIVES 


When Sunday morning came, Rosemary and Betty 
were up with the birds. They had been so thrilled that 
neither had slept more than a few winks during the 
night. 

“It doesn’t seem possible that Daddy-Doc is arriving 
this morning,” Rosemary exclaimed, hopping out of bed. 

“But keep your mind on the raid that’s to be made on 
the Old Man of the Mountain,” Betty reminded her. 

“Of course, but why worry about that? The Chief 
will organize the raiding party, and if he doesn’t, my 
Daddy-Doc will,” Rosemary stated confidently, as she 
hurriedly dressed herself. “You know, it seems a year 
since I left Chicago, and it will be so wonderful to have 
my Daddy-Doc here.” 

Downstairs Uncle Hiram and Aunt Polly were hard 
at work. Uncle Hiram was changing the position of the 
heavy sideboard three-eighths of an inch to satisfy Aunt 
Polly’s capricious taste. He was chasing every sugges- 

248 



Daddy-Doc Arrives 


249 


tion of a cobweb from all sorts of inaccessible places. 
Even if Aunt Polly’s eyesight was poor, she did have a 
most tantalizing imagination. Uncle Hiram’s knees 
fairly creaked as he clambered up and down on the un¬ 
steady kitchen stool. 

“I figure it’s time to stop this silly nonsense and eat 
breakfast,” Uncle Hiram suggested from his swaying 
support, as he moved the covered broom this way and 
that, in futile pursuit of dust and cobwebs. 

“Attend to business, Hiram Brown,” Aunt Polly re¬ 
plied briskly. “We’ve only begun. Do you suppose I 
want your brother to come here and criticize my house¬ 
keeping? Well, I guess not!” Aunt Polly punctuated 
her remarks with a wide grin. “See, Hiram, you’ve 
missed that cobweb there over that center Wedgwood 
plate. How like a man! Why, you can’t even see a cob¬ 
web when the end of it is tickling your very nose.” 

“There’s no cobweb there, Poll,” Uncle Hiram com¬ 
plained. “You imagine cobwebs in the coffee pot!” 

“Hiram Brown, quit your trifling! You’ve got to fin¬ 
ish this dusting even if you have to work after Will 
arrives. And you won’t get a bite of breakfast, either, 
till you’re through! So there! ” . 

When Betty and Rosemary came dashing down the 
stairs, they found Uncle Hiram still chasing the will-o’- 
wisp cobwebs of Aunt Polly’s imagining. 


250 Mystery Mountain 

Rosemary was so surprised at finding Uncle Hiram 
poking about with the broom, that she asked quickly, 
“Why, Aunt Polly! Aren’t we going to have breakfast 
before Daddy-Doc arrives? It’s now nearly seven 
o’clock.” 

“Your Aunt Polly’s got another one of her cleaning- 
up spells,” Uncle Hiram said in despair, “and there’s no 
knowing how long it will last.” 

“Oh, Hiram, hush!” Aunt Polly said with a broad 
grin. “You know yourself that I’m entirely too rheu¬ 
matic to climb to the top of that stool, and you know that 
you like to have things clean as well as anybody.” 

“ ‘Cleanliness is next to godliness,’ ” Daddy-Doc al¬ 
ways says,” Rosemary chattered. “But he won’t find 
anything to complain about in this house. I believe you 
would turn over every board in the kitchen floor, if you 
could, and scrub the under side.” 

“You’re right, Rosemary,” Uncle Hiram commented 
with a wry smile as he climbed down from the stool, 
“your Aunt Polly’d turn everything wrong side out if 
things weren’t nailed down. But thank goodness, the 
wainscoting and the walls are up to stay!” 

As soon as the girls had finished their hurried break¬ 
fast, they went out on the porch to listen for the expected 
arrival of the airplane. Tyne and Tad and Hen saw 
them and came over to learn the latest news. 


Daddy-Doc Arrives 


251 


“So your Dad’s coming!” Tyne began in a loud voice. 
“Hope you’re glad to see your ol’ man!” 

Rosemary bit her lips but said nothing, while Tyne 
stuck out her tongue and squinted her nose derisively. 

“Hello, Rosemary,” Tad greeted with lovelorn sad¬ 
ness. “You’re not leaving for good, are you?” 

“Her Daddy-Doc’s coming in by airplane,” Betty ex¬ 
plained with a feeling of great importance. 

“Then you’re going to help us with the circus after 
all?” he asked hopefully. 

“Certainly I am,” Rosemary nodded, keeping her 
eyes and ears alert. “I hear a plane. Oh, there it is!” 
She pointed to a tiny black object low on the horizon, 
and ran back into the house, calling, “Hurry, Uncle 
Hiram, if we’re going to catch a taxi and get to the 
airport. Daddy-Doc’s plane’s already in sight.” 

“Catch a taxi nothing,” Aunt Polly laughed. “Uncle 
Will knows perfectly well where we live. Last time he 
came, he rode up in a taxi, and if we give him a few 
minutes’ time, he’ll do it again.” 

“Rosemary, I guess your Aunt Polly’s right,” Uncle 
Hiram said, “If you’ve already seen the plane, it will 
arrive long before we could reach the field anyway, and 
we’ll likely miss your father for he’ll be coming while 
we’re still on the way. It’ll be best to wait here.” 

“But isn’t it dumb not to do something!” Rosemary 


252 Mystery Mountain 

commented to herself as she ran out into the street. 

She now heard the zooming plane as it descended, and 
a few seconds later she was aware by the silence that the 
plane had glided to the ground. 

“But can’t we run down toward Lake Street or some¬ 
thing?” she called to Betty. “What will Daddy-Doc 
think when he finds that I’m not there to meet him?” 

“Why, he won’t be expecting you at the field,” Betty 
assured her. “Only wait and he’ll be here in fifteen or 
twenty minutes.” 

After what seemed hours to Rosemary, the taxi finally 
came chugging up the street. Rosemary waved wildly 
at her father, and as soon as the taxi stopped, she dashed 
up to him and threw her arms about his neck. 

“Well, Rosy-Posy, how are you?” her father asked 
affectionately. 

“I’m entirely too happy to tell you,” Rosemary whis¬ 
pered in his ear. 

“Well, hello, Hiram, and I believe this is Betty. How 
you have grown. You’re just as tall as Rosemary now, 
aren’t you?” 

Aunt Polly, unaware that Rosemary’s father had ar¬ 
rived, was giving things a few last finishing touches. 

When they reached the porch, Uncle Will was saying, 
“Well, Hiram, you’re looking about as usual. And 
how’s Polly? As spick and span as always, I’m sure.” 


Daddy-Doc Arrives 


253 



“If anything, she gets a little more particular as she 
grows older. Her eyes aren’t nearly as good, but her 
imagination is a lot more ac¬ 
tive.” 

“Aren’t they ever going to 
mention the Old Man of the 
Mountain?” Rosemary whis¬ 
pered to Betty, almost bursting 
with anxiety and excitement. 

At this moment, Aunt Polly 
appeared in an immaculate 
figured apron to greet Rose¬ 
mary’s father. 









25 - 

THE RAID ON MYSTERY MOUNTAIN 


“Good morning, Polly, and how are you?” Rosemary’s 
father smiled as he entered the house. “I see you haven’t 
changed a bit. You’re just as handsome and happy as 
ever. But how do you ever manage to live so high on 
the mountain?” 

“You’re a bit grayer, Will, but I doubt if you’re a bit 
better-looking,” Aunt Polly grinned. 

“Yes, and you haven’t put on a pound of weight.” 

“But that’s not my fault. You see that’s why I live so 
high on the mountain.” 

“And as usual, you’re as neat as a pin.” 

“Well, we try to keep tolerably clean,” Aunt Polly 
answered proudly while Uncle Hiram smiled in silence. 

“Tolerable!” Rosemary’s father laughed outright, 
“Why, you’re immaculate!” 

“Come right out into the dining room, and I’ll get 
you a cup of coffee and a bite to eat. You must be half- 
starved, flying all the way from Chicago.” 


254 



255 


The Raid on Mystery Mountain 

“It seems hardly yesterday since I was last here,’’ 
Rosemary’s father added, as he followed Aunt Polly and 
sat down at the table. 

“I know you always did have a weakness for coffee!” 

“For your coffee,” Dr. Brown answered. “Why, I 
bore all my friends to death telling them about the de¬ 
licious coffee you make.” 

Rosemary all this while was fidgeting impatiently. 
“How can I ever wait to tell him?” she whispered to 
Betty. 

“And here are some doughnuts,” Aunt Polly smiled 
as she set the plate before him. “And perhaps you’d 
like a piece of cherry pie.” 

“You forget that I eat a light breakfast, and flying 
hasn’t added anything to my appetite. But I remember 
your wonderful cherry pie, and I really can’t refuse a 
piece.” 

“You’re going to take us all down to the hotel to 
dinner,” Rosemary interrupted, no longer able to re¬ 
strain herself. “Aunt Polly is expecting it.” 

“Don’t listen to her, Will,” Polly insisted. “Rose¬ 
mary doesn’t know what a treat it is for you to get some 
real home cooking.” 

“Yes, if you have more of this cherry pie baked and 
waiting, it would be a shame to run off to the hotel. 
Um—um!” and smacked his lips. As he sipped his 


256 Mystery Mountain 

coffee, he added, “How do you ever manage to do it, 
Polly? In Chicago they don’t know what real coffee is 
like.” 

“By the way,” Aunt Polly began in an entirely differ¬ 
ent tone of voice, “has Hiram told you what a regular 
Pinkerton detective Rosemary has turned out to be?” 

“Why, no!” he exclaimed, turning toward his im¬ 
patient daughter. 

“I’ve solved the mystery of the Old Man of the Moun¬ 
tain,” Rosemary burst forth, unable to remain silent any 
longer. 

“The Old Man of the Mountain!” her father said in 
great surprise. “You don’t mean you’ve been investigat¬ 
ing that place!” 

“There’s a secret vault and there’s a concealed stair¬ 
way and, Daddy-Doc, there’s an imprisoned girl by the 
name of Claribel Lee, and—” Rosemary chattered on 
spiritedly. 

“Hiram, what’s all this about?” interrupted Rose¬ 
mary’s father. 

“Better let Rosemary finish her own story,” replied 
Uncle Hiram laughing. “She can do a lot quicker job 
of it than anybody else.” 

“Rosemary is right,” interrupted Aunt Polly, “she’s 
actually solved the old mystery. She and Hiram and 
Betty went down town last night to inform the police, 


2 57 


The Raid on Mystery Mountain 

and the Chief is collecting all the able-bodied men he 
can find, and they’re going to make a raid on the old 
hotel this morning. I shouldn’t be surprised if the posse 
is on its way up the mountain this very minute.” 

“But I don’t understand!” Rosemary’s father repeated, 
turning to his daughter. 

“Oh, no, it wasn’t Aunt Polly’s fault, nor Uncle 
Hiram’s fault, nor Betty’s fault either. It was all because 
of my own curiosity.” 

“Your curiosity has many sins to answer for,” her 
father commented reminiscently. 

“You see, I became so curious I couldn’t wait an¬ 
other minute, and so I ran off alone up Mystery Moun¬ 
tain, when nobody knew where I was,” and Rosemary 
went on with the whole story. 

“And so you’ve notified the police?” her father asked 
eagerly, when she had finished. 

“Yes,” Uncle Hiram answered. “Poll and I examined 
the documents and they seem to be genuine. We figured 
it was the best way, for Rosemary wanted the raid made 
while you were here to help. She told the Chief, and he 
promised to wait for your arrival.” 

“A great lot of assistance I’ll be,” Rosemary’s father 
laughed. 

“Of course you’ll be a lot of help,” Rosemary ex¬ 
claimed with enthusiasm. “I told the Chief what a very 


258 Mystery Mountain 

brave man you are, and how you’re not afraid of any¬ 
body or anything, not even of smallpox, flu, or diph¬ 
theria!” 

“You actually told the Chief that I wasn’t afraid of 
smallpox!” 

Rosemary’s father maintained his usual calm, though 
he felt very much like laughing. “And what did the 
Chief say?” 

“The Chief believed it,” Rosemary replied. “He said 
he wouldn’t make the raid until after you had arrived. 
He knew you’d be a great help.” 

Suddenly realizing how his daughter idealized him, 
Rosemary’s father said seriously, “Of course I’ll go, Rose¬ 
mary, and I’m glad you had the Chief wait until I 
arrived. Hiram and I will take Betty and you along, 
and together we’ll rescue Claribel.” 

At the sound of voices, Betty had gone to the window, 
and now she exclaimed, “Here they come! Here they 
come! ” 

Rosemary’s father quickly finished his last cup of cof¬ 
fee, just as the posse of men, dressed in hunting clothes 
and each with a deer rifle or a shotgun across his arm, 
arrived. The Chief, his gun on his hip and his shining 
star on his breast, was in the lead. 

“You go right along, and I’ll have dinner ready when 
you get back,” Aunt Polly announced in a tone of voice 


The Raid on Mystery Mountain 259 

which meant that nothing must be allowed to interfere 
with her routine. 

Uncle Hiram went fumbling into the closet, and came 
out with a dusty deer rifle and a double-barreled shotgun. 
“We’ll have to carry these along simply to be in style,” 
he said, handing the rifle to Rosemary’s father. 

“I’ll do better with the shotgun. I haven’t fired a shot 
for years.” 

“Of course there won’t be any shooting, but it will 
look better if we take the guns,” Uncle Hiram added in 
a matter-of-fact manner. 

The next minute, as they went out into the street to 
join the raiders, they were aware of Aunt Polly’s warn¬ 
ing, “For goodness sake, do be careful, all of you, espe¬ 
cially you girls.” 

After Uncle Hiram had introduced the Chief to Dr. 
William Brown, the Chief stopped long enough to smile 
kindly at Rosemary, “So this is your brave Daddy-Doc?” 
Then turning back to her father, he said, with a friendly 
handclasp, “I’m very glad you’re going with us, sir.” 

The two men exchanged quick mirthful glances while 
Rosemary thought to herself, “Yes, and he’s just as brave 
as I said he was!” 

As they were ready to start forward, the Chief turned 
to Rosemary and Betty, “I’m sorry, but you two girls 
can’t go along! No children are permitted on this raid.” 


260 Mystery Mountain 

“But Hiram and I will see that they don’t get hurt,” 
Rosemary’s father answered calmly. “Besides, it seems 
to me that this is as much Betty’s and Rosemary’s excur¬ 
sion as it is ours, Chief. They have already visited the 
Old Man of the Mountain alone and without injury, 
and it isn’t quite right to leave them behind now! With 
all this army of men, there’s nothing to fear.” 

The Chief’s face softened a bit as he answered, “Well, 
remember, if anything should happen to the girls, you’ll 
be entirely responsible. I’ve given you fair warning that 
it’s not my idea to take them along.” 

“Don’t worry,” Uncle Hiram assured him, “Rosemary 
and Betty are the kind of girls that can look out for 
themselves anywhere.” 

The Chief started forward, with the men close behind 
him, and a strange silence fell upon the group. Rose¬ 
mary and Betty were conscious of the grinding gravel 
beneath the heavy boots and of much deep breathing as 
the men strained and toiled up the steep incline. 

When they reached the steel picket fence, the Chief 
brought his men together behind a clump of jack pine 
and explained, in complete detail, the plan for the raid. 
The men were to wait until the stroke of ten from the 
town clock before moving forward, while the entire 
posse had been instructed to follow the method of a 
wolf hunt. A second group had been organized and had 


26 i 


The Raid on Mystery Mountain 

advanced from the opposite side of the mountain. Thus 
they would suddenly close in on all sides, to prevent any 
possible chance of escape. 

One posse was to attack from the deep woods at the 
rear, while the posse under the command of the Chief, 
at the given signal, was to enter the hotel from the wide 
front veranda. The plan was to make a thorough search 
of the building as quickly as possible and then to explore 
the secret staircase and the hidden vault. 

While awaiting the passing of the slow minutes, each 
man was given final instructions as to his individual 
duties. At last the town clock announced the hour. The 
Chief straightened to his full height and gave the com¬ 
mand in a subdued voice, “Attention, men! Move quick¬ 
ly and silently.” 

Rosemary and Betty could feel their hearts beating 
wildly, as they and their fathers followed the others in 
the hurried advance. 




26. 

THE HEART OF THE MYSTERY 


The men crouched low, keeping the clumps of poplar 
and jack pine between them and the Old Man of the 
Mountain as they pushed through the steel picket fence. 
Once inside the enclosure, they hurried to the front 
entrance of the hotel. A red squirrel stopped chattering 
and scampered up the Lombardy poplar, and a robin 
flew off her nest in the porch. As they reached the steps, 
Rosemary and Betty were conscious of the faint cry of 
a girl and of the loud crash of a door. 

The men immediately threw their combined weight 
against the massive oak door. It creaked and trembled, 
but did not give way. A second time they charged and 
pushed, but again they failed to force it open. 

The Chief stopped but a second to consider, for there 
was no time to lose. He backed away from the long 
French window beside the door, threw his shoulder 
against the sash, and sent it crashing into the lobby. He 
leapt through the window and the men followed. 


262 



The Heart of the Mystery 263 

At that moment a stooped old man hobbled down 
the wide circular staircase, forcibly pulling a slight, 
golden-haired girl whose eyes were blindfolded. As he 
started across the lobby in the direction of the hidden 
vault, the Chief drew his pistol and shouted, “Halt! 
Stick ’em up! You’re under arrest!” 

Terrified at the suddenness of the raid, the man 
stopped short and threw up his hands. Rosemary’s fa¬ 
ther stepped calmly forward and removed the blindfold 
from the girl’s eyes. 

The Chief handcuffed the man and searched his pock¬ 
ets. Then turning to Rosemary and Betty, who were 
watching from near the window, he said kindly, “Now 
comes your turn, girls. You can tell this girl that 
everything is O. K.” 

Rosemary and Betty came forward, and Rosemary put 
her arm about the frightened girl as she whispered to 
her, “Don’t be afraid, Claribel, we’re your friends.” And 
Betty added, “Oh, Claribel, I’m so happy,” and she, too, 
put her arms about the astonished girl. 

Claribel’s pallid lips quivered, and two great tears 
rolled down her wan cheeks. Her eyes were swimming, 
as was her mind, and she was too bewildered to speak. 

In the brief silence that followed, the men became 
aware of a thumping staccato down the corridor. A 
veiled woman in black was hurrying toward them. Be- 


264 Mystery Mountain 

fore the Chief could collect his wits, the woman had 
disappeared through a side door and into the room from 
which ran the concealed staircase, closing the door be¬ 
hind her with a bang. 

Two men were detailed to guard the handcuffed pris¬ 
oner, while Rosemary and Betty and Dr. Brown were 
left to take care of Claribel. The others rushed head¬ 
long down the corridor in pursuit of the escaping 
woman. 

The Chief tried to open the door which the woman 
had just slammed shut, but it was barred with a night 
latch. The Chief and two of his men put their shoul¬ 
ders against the door and strained every muscle but 
could not force it open. Wiping the perspiration from 
his forehead, the Chief remarked, “We’ll have to think 
of some other way.” 

“We’ll batter the door down!” came the answer. 

Two of the men hurried through the broken window 
to the front entrance, picked up a loose piece of sand¬ 
stone coping from the porch foundation, and lugged it 
back in their arms. 

“We’ll make quick work of it now!” they shouted. 

Whang! Whang! resounded the measured impact of 
the heavy stone, and with the third blow the door splin¬ 
tered and flew open. 

Excited over this last adventure, Rosemary entirely 


The Heart of the Mystery 265 

forgot Claribel for the moment and raced down the 
corridor and into the room behind the men. 

“We’ll have to figure this out,” stammered the Chief 
as he surveyed the room. “The directions don’t seem 
any too explicit as to just where we’re to find the button 
that opens the secret door leading to the concealed 
stairs.” 

“Yes, they are,” Rosemary piped up impulsively. “The 
button should be here at the left corner of the mantle 
over the fireplace. Yes, see? Here’s a greasy spot on the 
wall that shows they’ve been using it. Here is the place, 
Mr. Chief. Listen while I press the button!” 

The Chief was surprised at the girl’s audaciousness 
and courage, but at once he heard a slight creaking rat¬ 
tle in the closet as the button was pressed. Sure enough, 
the opening door revealed the concealed stairs. 

The Chief tiptoed into the closet, and peered down 
the long flight of stairs, but the deep gloom defied his 
vision. He had no idea how many people might be in 
hiding, ready to spring upon him without warning. 

He pulled his cap lower over his eyes, still concentrat¬ 
ing; and suddenly he had a clever idea. He banged the 
outside closet door as if closing it behind him, and then 
stamped with his feet as if descending the stairs. Then 
from the blackness came a hoarse, frightened whisper. 

“Are you safe, Craig Harding?” 


266 


Mystery Mountain 


“Yes,” answered the Chief, still pretending. 

“And is Claribel safe, too?” 

“Yes, she’s safe.” 

“Thank God,” came the relieved reply. “Whatever 
made them raid us so suddenly, and on a Sunday morn¬ 
ing when we were off our guard?” 

“Help me,” whispered the Chief, pretending still 
further. “Here, help me, ClaribePs caught her foot in 
the stairs.” 

When the woman in black, with her veil raised, stum¬ 
bled out of the gloom, the Chief’s pistol and flashlight 
were in position. 

“Put up your hands! ” he commanded. 

The startled woman instinctively obeyed. 

“And now come up these stairs, and be quick about 
it!” he thundered. 

The woman stumbled slowly to the landing and out 
into the room. She was a pitiful sight to behold. Her 
face was wrinkled and sallow, her shoulders stooped, 
and her sunken eyes swollen. Her mouth was hard and 
dejected, and her black silk dress was shiny and in tat¬ 
ters. Her breath came in great sighs as she dropped her 
head in disgrace. 

“And so Craig Harding told you where to find me?” 
she suddenly cried in cool anger, as the Chief handcuffed 
her. 


The Heart of the Mystery 267 

“He did,” the Chief replied truthfully, though the 
woman misinterpreted his answer. 

‘Til get even with that scoundrel for telling on me,” 
the woman spoke in deep resentment. 

“Very well, proceed,” the Chief urged curtly. 

“The man you’re holding handcuffed out there in the 
lobby is Craig Harding. He is the same man who built 
this ramshackle hotel.” 

“I knew it all the while,” Rosemary exploded, quite 
unconscious of her superiors. “I saw the big scar in his 
cheek the other morning when you two were returning 
just before daylight with vegetables and a hen you had 
stolen.” 

“Silence, young Miss!” the Chief shouted harshly. 
“Another word, and out you go.” Turning again to the 
old woman, he said, “Very well, if that’s Craig Harding 
out there, then who are you?” 

“That’s none of your business,” the woman replied 
insolently. 

“We’ll soon see about that. Who else have you got 
down in that hidden vault?” 

“No one,” replied the woman quickly. 

“Are you sure?” the Chief asked coolly. 

“Am I sure?” the woman smiled bitterly, “Am I sure! 
Just go down and take a look around for yourself!” 

The Chief turned the woman over to one of his ofS- 


268 Mystery Mountain 

cers, and with his flashlight in one hand and his pistol 
in the other, cautiously felt his way down the stairs, 
followed by three or four members of the posse. After 
a few minutes, the Chief and the others returned with¬ 
out finding anyone else. The Chief addressed his first 
words to the old woman. 

“Who is that girl out there with Craig Harding?” 

“Ask Craig Harding that question,” the woman an¬ 
swered with a shrug of her shoulders. 

“Have you anything else to say?” 

“No. Yes, I have. I think you’re all a bunch of 
crooks! ” 

The Chief answered not a word as he led the woman 
back into the corridor, where the handcuffed prisoner 
was being held and where Betty and Dr. Brown were 
comforting Claribel. 

“Well, Craig Harding, and how are you today?” The 
Chief smiled as he confronted the captive. 

The man wilted, and the big white scar on his cheek 
stood out plainly upon his flushed face. 

“I’m not Craig Harding!” 

“Go slow there, Wolfe Barclay, we know who you 
are and all about your evil deeds, and this woman here 
knows that we do,” the Chief declared firmly. 

“Yes, and I told them, if you want to know,” the 
woman added in defiance. 


The Heart of the Mystery 269 

“If I’m Craig Harding,” the man spoke with great 
effort and in a slow monotone, “if I’m Craig Harding, 
she’s—Harriet Fairfax! ” 

“You’re a traitor,” the woman wailed, and had it not 
been for the handcuffs, she would have attacked him. 

“You mean, Harriet, that we both are!” Craig Har¬ 
ding added in cold, sinister accents. 

“Who is this Claribel Lee?” the Chief asked bluntly. 

“That’s none of your business,” Harriet Fairfax re¬ 
plied bitterly. 

“Not so fast!” commanded the Chief. “I’m asking 
Craig Harding.” 

“It’s none of your business!” Craig Harding stam¬ 
mered. 

“Very well, then, we’ll ask the girl herself. Who are 
you Claribel?” 

“That I dare not tell,” came the plaintive reply. “That 
woman will whip me if I do.” 

“But she won’t dare to touch you now,” Betty whis¬ 
pered, her arm still around Claribel’s waist. 

Harriet Fairfax scowled at the girl with tigerish eyes. 

“She will never harm you again,” the Chief added 
with such sudden vehemence that Claribel burst out 
sobbing. 

“There now, Claribel, nobody’s going to hurt you,” 
the Chief smiled. 


270 


Mystery Mountain 


“Of course nobody’s going to hurt you,” Rosemary 
added, as she, too, put her arm around the sobbing girl. 
“Listen, Claribel, you’re going with Betty and me down 
to Aunt Polly’s for the nicest Sunday dinner you’ve ever 
eaten.” 

Claribel smiled a faint, dubious smile. 

“Don’t you see that both the old mummies are prison¬ 
ers? Mr. Chief here will give them what they deserve,” 
Rosemary continued, her heart overflowing with sym¬ 
pathy. 

“Don’t you understand,” the Chief added, “that no 
one can harm you now, Claribel? These two, who kid¬ 
napped you and held you captive, are now our prison¬ 
ers. You are free at last.” 

“Won’t you allow the girl to come with us?” Dr. 
Brown asked as he put his hand gently on the frightened 
child’s head. 

“Yes, you are free, Claribel,” Craig Harding spoke 
with great effort. “Neither Harriet nor I will ever harm 
you again. You are as free as a bird, to come and go 
as you like. And perhaps you will again find your right¬ 
ful father and mother and be happy.” 

“Yes, Craig Harding is right,” bemoaned the woman 
in black. “We are through with you, or better, you are 
through with us. And forgive us, if you can.” As she 
spoke, Harriet Fairfax broke down, sobbing like a child. 






“You’re going with Betty and me down to Aunt Folly’s” 








273 


The Heart of the Mystery 

“Then I won’t be punished if I go out of this prison?” 
Claribel asked with eyes that seemed to see a new light. 

“No one is going to harm you,” Dr. Brown explained. 
“You’re coming with Betty and Rosemary and Hiram 
and me this minute. Aunt Polly will never forgive us 
if we keep her Sunday dinner waiting, especially her 
cherry pie!” 

“I’ll leave Claribel in your charge for the present,” 
the Chief announced to Uncle Hiram, “but I’ll be seeing 
you later in the afternoon about her.” And then turning 
to his prisoners, he added, “And you two will be com¬ 
ing with me. You’ll be glad to tell me everything about 
Claribel and who she is by the time I’ve finished with 
you. Let’s get going; forward, march!” 

When they emerged at the front entrance, the Chief 
blew three vigorous blasts on his whistle. At this pre¬ 
arranged signal, men came hurrying from every direc¬ 
tion, and in a minute or two the entire place was a seeth¬ 
ing crowd of people. 

The Chief explained all that was known; and the 
men, after investigating the secret passageway and fully 
satisfying their curiosity, started down the mountain and 
back home, feeling that this had been a red-letter day 
in the life of the town. 


27 . 

CLARIBEL BECOMES CLAIRE 


Aunt Polly was just finishing the dinner, and the 
entire house was fragrant with roast chicken and other 
delectable, savory dishes, when Uncle Hiram opened the 
front door and ushered the girls into the house. 

“It’s about time you were getting back,” Aunt Polly 
called, and then made her appearance in her immaculate 
apron. 

“Yes, and we’ve brought our appetites with us,” Rose¬ 
mary’s father said in anticipation, pulling a bunch of 
cockleburrs from one leg of his trousers. 

“Well, did you find out anything?” Aunt Polly asked 
curiously. 

“This is Claribel Lee,” Rosemary announced in proud 
excitement. “This is Aunt Polly, Claribel.” 

“Is this really the girl that—” Aunt Polly was inter¬ 
rupted by the uplifted hand of Dr. Brown and changed 
her tone quickly, “Oh, yes, Claribel, we’re glad you’re 
here with us for dinner. We’ve not much to eat, but 
you’re welcome to everything we’ve got.” 


274 



Claribel Becomes Claire 


275 


“Aunt Polly’s only spoofing,” Rosemary’s father 
laughed. “Claribel, you don’t know how delicious Aunt 
Polly’s food is until you’ve sampled one of her lavish 
Sunday dinners.” 

Claribel was so self-conscious and shy that she simply 
looked down at the floor and said nothing. 

“But let’s go up to our room,” Betty suggested, and 
she and Rosemary led Claribel upstairs. 

Betty went into the bathroom and turned on the wa¬ 
ter. “Claribel, you jump into the tub, and Rosemary and 
I will get you some fresh clothes and then everything 
will be fine!” 

Claribel did as she was bid, and while she was in the 
tub, Rosemary and Betty laid out a complete outfit of 
their own clothes for her. As the girls helped Claribel 
to dress, her features at last relaxed and a shy smile be¬ 
gan to play about her lips. 

“Have you lived long at the Old Man of the Moun¬ 
tain?” Rosemary began, hoping to get Claribel started 
talking. 

“Oh, is that what you call the place?” Claribel’s eyes 
opened wide. 

“They used to call it a castle,” Betty explained, “but 
that was years ago ” 

“And how long do you say you’ve lived at the top of 
Mystery Mountain?” Rosemary asked. 


276 Mystery Mountain 

“Almost as long as I can remember, but not quite,” 
Claribel replied in a voice that revealed an overtone of 
sweet sadness. 

The kindly interest of Betty and Rosemary quickly 
worked a complete change in Claribel, and her face re¬ 
laxed as she lost her sense of fear. 

“Where did you live before you came here?” Rose¬ 
mary continued. 

“I lived in Chicago, I believe, but it’s been so long ago 
that it seems like a fairy tale.” 

“Why, that’s funny, I live in Chicago, too,” Rosemary 
exclaimed excitedly. 

“Isn’t that strange,” Claribel smiled. 

“It’s the kind of thing you’re always told to beware 
of when you meet strangers, but this time it’s true. It 
only shows how small the world is after all,” Rosemary 
chattered, remembering one of her father’s oft-repeated 
maxims. 

“But how did you happen to come to the Old Man 
of the Mountain?” 

“I don’t know exactly, but I believe I was brought. 
You call it kidnapped, or something like that.” 

“Kidnapped is right! That’s just what I’ve thought 
all the while,” Rosemary answered, feeling very proud 
of herself. 

“I was out playing alone in front of the house one 


Claribel Becomes Claire 


277 


day,” Claribel continued with a sudden show of sorrow, 
as she recalled the calamity that had befallen her. “We 
lived in a great beautiful house, almost as large as the 
Old Man of the Mountain, as you call it. It was on 
Michigan Avenue, yes, I’m sure that is the name. My 
mother was away at some party on that particular after¬ 
noon, and the nurse was careless about watching me. 
She was reading, and her mind was a million miles 
away—at least that’s what my mother always accused 
her of doing while she was out. As I remember, I 
opened the door without making a noise, and then 
slipped into the front yard.” 

“And then?” asked Rosemary in breathless excite¬ 
ment. 

“And then a man stopped in the street and called me 
to him. He was dressed like a gentleman. He limped 
and carried a large gold-headed cane. He gave me a bag 
of candy, and I went with him into a side street. Here 
we met a woman in black, the same woman you saw 
up at the castle, and next thing I knew we were in a 
dark room. The woman somehow put me to sleep.” 

“Perhaps it was the candy that did it,” Betty sug¬ 
gested. 

“No doubt she drugged you,” Rosemary agreed ex¬ 
citedly. 

“The next thing I remember, we were in a Pullman, 


278 Mystery Mountain 

and next, I was a prisoner at the top of Mystery Moun¬ 
tain” 

“How dreadful,” Betty commented, almost in tears. 
“But what did they do it for?” 

“They wanted to get a lot of money from my father. 
But they always quarrelled and said they were double- 
crossed, whatever that means, and that some other crook 
forced them out and collected the money himself. That’s 
why they were forced to hide me, for fear of being 
caught themselves.” 

“And who was your father?” Rosemary asked. 

“My father was President of the Bruce Tile Company. 
His first name was Robert, but Mother always called 
him Bob. And my name isn’t Claribel, but Claire.” 

“And so you’re Claire Bruce!” Rosemary exclaimed. 
“My Uncle Hiram was telling Betty and me about you 
the other evening.” 

“Yes,” Betty added, “there was a reward of ten thou¬ 
sand dollars offered for your return.” 

“And I’ll wager my Daddy-Doc will know just where 
to find your father,” Rosemary asserted. 

At this juncture, the girls were interrupted by Aunt 
Polly, who called happily, “Claribel, Rosemary, Betty! 
Girls! Dinner is ready, and if you want anything to 
eat, you had better hurry!” 

“We’re coming, Aunt Polly,” Rosemary shouted in 


Claribel Becomes Claire 


279 


reply. “And Claire, remember that we are all your 
friends. We’ll take you back to your family in Chicago 
when Daddy-Doc and I return home. And now we’ll 
go downstairs and tell the family everything.” 

The others were already seated at the table when 
Claire, Rosemary, and Betty reached the dining room. 

“Let me introduce you to Claire Bruce,” Rosemary 
announced promptly, “the daughter of Robert Bruce, 
the President of the Bruce Tile Company of Chicago. 
And Uncle Hiram, didn’t you say there was a reward 
of ten thousand dollars offered for her return?” 

“Yes, there was a few years ago, but I don’t know if 
the reward is still up,” Uncle Hiram drawled in an effort 
not to show his real excitement. 

“But Rosemary,” her father interrupted good-hu¬ 
moredly, “You girls must sit down this very minute, or 
Aunt Polly’s wonderful dinner will be getting cold.” 

“Oh, how can anyone think of eating at such a time 
as this!” Rosemary exclaimed. 

“This is exactly the time to eat,” her father insisted. 
“You don’t want to make all the rest of us as restless 
as you are. We’ll hear no more of this till we’ve finished 
eating. Then, if you’re good girls, I have something to 
tell you that will make all three of you very, very happy. 
But not another word now!” 

“Right you are, Uncle Will,” Aunt Polly added smil- 


280 Mystery Mountain 

ing. “We’ll start eating now without any more of this 
palaver.” 

“But, please, Daddy-Doc,” Rosemary again began. 

“Rosemary, in your excitement you’re forgetting your 
manners,” her father lightly reproved, and with this, 
she took her place quietly beside Claire and Betty. 

The three girls pretended to eat, but everything tasted 
the same. They were entirely too excited to be at all 
interested in food. 

“Rosemary,” her father called across the table, “you 
girls haven’t eaten enough to keep a robin alive.” 

“We’re sorry,” Rosemary apologized, remembering 
her manners. “Aunt Polly, we know everything is very 
good. But somehow, we’re not hungry today.” 

“That’s entirely all right,” Aunt Polly laughed. “I 
think I know how you feel. I’m a little off center my¬ 
self.” 

Rosemary’s father pulled a cigar case from his pocket 
and handed it to his brother. A minute later Uncle 
Hiram and Dr. Brown were smoking contentedly. Rose¬ 
mary’s father leaned back leisurely in his chair, and 
turned toward Aunt Polly. 

“You know I haven’t enjoyed a dinner so much in 
months. How I wish we had somebody in Chicago who 
knew how to prepare a real feast like this!” 

“But Daddy-Doc,” Rosemary called out while Aunt 


Claribel Becomes Claire 281 

Pally was still struggling to find words for an appropri¬ 
ate answer, “you said you have something to tell us that 
will make us very happy.” 

“So I have,” he began, drawing another contented 
puff of smoke from his cigar. “Claire, I know your 
father, Robert Bruce, almost as well as I know my own 
brother here, and unless I miss my guess, Claire, you’ll 
be at home and safe in your own bed tomorrow night, 
if not sooner. Folks, this is just another illustration of 
how very small the old world is after all.” 

“But Daddy-Doc, how can you be so poky?” Rose¬ 
mary called, beside herself in excitement. “How can you 
put off letting Claire’s father know what’s happened! ” 

Rosemary’s father raised himself from his chair with 
an effort. Mountain climbing and a hearty dinner were 
a combination that was almost too much for him. He 
took three more deliberate pulls from his cigar, made a 
wry face, and then smiled. 

“Hiram, these girls will be the death of us yet. They 
don’t give us a minute’s peace, but I suppose we’d better 
be going.” 

So saying, Dr. Brown went to the telephone and called 
a taxi. 

“We’re going along, too,” Rosemary insisted. 

“You girls are going to stay here,” her father replied. 
“The afternoon will pass before we know it. It’s after 


282 Mystery Mountain 

two o’clock now, and our pilot is expecting us to start 
back at five.” 

“But you’re not going to take Rosemary with you, I 
hope,” Aunt Polly said with feeling. Rosemary had been 
somewhat of a care, but Aunt Polly began to feel lone¬ 
some merely at the thought of her going. 

“We’ve only begun to get acquainted,” Betty added. 

“Yes, Rosemary will be going back with me,” her 
father insisted, for he felt lonesome at the very mention 
of leaving her behind. 

“Well, it’ll be a big job to get her things ready by five 
o’clock,” Aunt Polly replied, “but if you say so, it can 
be done.” 

“The trunk can be sent by express later,” her father 
explained. “All that’s necessary today is to take her 
handbags.” 

Dr. Brown took his soft felt hat off the rack behind 
the door, ready to start. In the excitement, Betty had 
been almost entirely submerged, but now she found the 
chance to speak. 

“Don’t be gone long, Dad, and see if you can’t per¬ 
suade Uncle Will to let Rosemary stay another week.” 

“And don’t forget about the reward,” Rosemary called 
after them. 

Soon Rosemary’s father and Uncle Hiram were jig¬ 
gling down the steep mountainside toward Police Head- 


Claribel Becomes Claire 283 

quarters. As the taxi driver hurried along, the doctor’s 
voice softened. 

“Hiram, I wish you’d take a week off sometime and 
let me show you the sights about Chicago. You could 
make a visit just as well as not. The Ore Dock would 
still be here when you returned.” 

“I’ve often thought about it,” Uncle Hiram replied, 
“but somehow I never quite manage to get started. 
Polly, you know, will never consent to go herself, and 
she keeps me pretty busy around the house when there’s 
a day off.” 

There followed a wistful silence. Dr. Brown puffed 
at his cigar while Uncle Hiram sat lost in his wandering 
thoughts. After a time Rosemary’s father spoke again. 

“Well, you can at least bundle Betty up and send her 
along some day soon, and this will give you an excellent 
excuse to come to Chicago for a day or two when it’s 
time to bring her home. I’ll expect you to do this before 
the year is out.” 

“Yes, perhaps I can,” Uncle Hiram replied with a far¬ 
away expression. 

When they entered the Police Headquarters, the Chief 
was awaiting them in his private office. He listened 
eagerly as they explained their errand. 

“We’ve not yet been able to get a confession either 
from Craig Harding or Harriet Fairfax,” the Chief said 


284 Mystery Mountain 

when they had finished, “but if the girl proves to be 
Claire Bruce, as you say, we’ll finish with the prisoners 
in short order.” 

“The next thing of importance then,” Dr. Brown 
added, “is to get hold of Bob Bruce on the phone.” 

“Very well,” the Chief agreed. “You call him up, and 
I’ll listen in on the conversation to see that everything 
is on the square.” 

Rosemary’s father took up his telephone and the Chief 
took up the extension on the adjoining desk and listened. 

“I want to talk with Bob Bruce, President of the Bruce 
Tile Company of Chicago. Yes, his name is simply 
Robert Bruce, and his residence is on Michigan Avenue,” 
he explained to the long-distance operator. “Hurry the 
call, and don’t mind the expense. Get it through as 
quickly as possible. It’s most important that I get the 
call through immediately.” 

Several minutes later, when the conversation was com¬ 
pleted, Dr. Brown and the Chief talked over the fur¬ 
ther details of the case. 

“Well, everything’s settled,” Rosemary’s father an¬ 
nounced to Uncle Hiram. “Bob Bruce must nearly have 
had heart failure by the time I had finally explained 
everything that has happened. He’s chartering a plane 
and will be here in Marquette within three hours. And 
now, Chief, you’ll be at the field when Bob Bruce ar- 


Claribel Becomes Claire 


285 



rives and bring him up to Hiram’s house for the meeting 
with Claire. If you’ll excuse us now, Chief, Hiram and 
I will walk around town and 
look at the old landmarks and 
talk over the old times when 
we were kids.” 

“Very well,” the Chief 
smiled, “I’ll be seeing you 
very soon.” 






28. 

IT ENDS HAPPILY 


When Rosemary’s father and Uncle Hiram returned 
from their conference with the Chief, they found the 
two girls impatiently waiting to hear about all that had 
happened. Claire was upstairs sound asleep, exhausted 
by the intense excitement. 

Rosemary began her barrage of questions before her 
father had time to find a comfortable chair. 

“Were you able to talk with Claire’s father?” 

“Yes.” 

“What did he say?” 

“Among other things, that he would charter a plane. 
He should arrive here in Marquette in about two hours.” 

“Oh, I’m so happy!” 

“So am I,” smiled Betty. 

Rosemary and Betty had been moving about restlessly, 
but now they sat down side by side, facing Rosemary’s 
father. 

“And is the ransom money still offered for Claire’s 
return?” Rosemary continued. 


286 



It Ends Happily 287 

“Yes, everything’s fine,” her father replied, again 
opening his cigar case and handing it to Uncle Hiram. 

“Oh, Betty! ” Rosemary exclaimed, “How wonderful! 
We’ll divide the money equally. And when we’re ready 
for college, the ten thousand will pay our way through.” 

“But I don’t deserve half the money,” Betty answered 
seriously. 

“You surely do,” Rosemary insisted, “for if it hadn’t 
been for you and Uncle Hiram, I would never have 
known anything about the Old Man of the Mountain, 
and all that had happened there, and could never have 
found the copper box or have known about Claire.” 

Rosemary’s father and Uncle Hiram sat back, enjoy¬ 
ing their cigars and listening. Each was proud of the 
fine spirit that the girls showed toward each other, and 
knew that this was the beginning of a lifelong friendship 
between them. The fathers had, however, secretly de¬ 
cided that all the money should be deposited to Betty’s 
credit and used in sending her to college. 

After a time Dr. Brown said: “We’ll stop the argu¬ 
ment just where it is. If the ransom money is paid, 
Betty shall surely have her half of it, and that’s that! 
And now, Rosemary, you had better get your things 
packed so that we can take your suitcases with us. 
Hiram, you can send the trunk by express later.” 

As Betty and Rosemary hurried upstairs, Aunt Polly 


288 Mystery Mountain 

came down, breathless and efficient as usual. “Well, that 
little job is finished. But Will, you surely can get along 
without Rosemary for another week. We’ll all miss her 
so much, especially Betty. Besides, she has plans to be 
in a small circus with Tyne and Hen and Tad.” 

“I’m sorry, Polly,” Rosemary’s father explained as he 
slowly blew a circle of smoke, “but it’s best that Rose¬ 
mary return with me.” 

He was careful to conceal his real reason—his loneli¬ 
ness at the thought of parting from his impetuous 
daughter. 

“Well, she’s more than welcome to stay,” Uncle 
Hiram added with feeling. 

“We’ve certainly had a lively time while she’s been 
here,” Aunt Polly laughed. “And believe me, she’s kept 
us on the jump every minute.” 

“That’s just like her,” her father smiled. “But Polly, 
you and Hiram and Betty are all going to visit us in 
Chicago very soon. You deserve a vacation, you know. 
You can let Betty come first for a month’s visit, if you 
like, and then you and Hiram can come to see the sights 
and bring Betty home.” 

“Well, we’re always pretty busy,” Aunt Polly an¬ 
swered with a sigh, “but we’ll at least make the effort.” 

As she spoke, Uncle Hiram’s expression showed that 
he was not at all certain that this plan would succeed, 


It Ends Happily 289 

but he added, “This time, Poll, I believe we can make 
a go of it.” 

While they were thus busily visiting, they were quite 
unaware that a crowd had begun to gather outside the 
house. At first it was made up mostly of children, but 
soon men and women began to appear. Next a motor¬ 
cycle policeman arrived, and then more and more peo¬ 
ple, and then more policemen, until the entire street for 
two or three blocks was a solid mass. 

By this time Rosemary had her things packed, and 
Claire had awakened. Before coming downstairs, the 
girls went to the window and took another look at the 
Old Man of the Mountain. 

“He looks quite forlorn and deserted,” Rosemary sug¬ 
gested. 

“To me, he looks a bit foolish now that his secret 
is out,” Betty replied. 

“And I hope I’ll never have to think of him again,” 
Claire added. 

“There’s our kite still dangling from the Lombardy,” 
Betty laughed. 

As the girls came downstairs, the reporters from the 
Associated Press and the special reporters from news¬ 
papers in Milwaukee, Minneapolis, and Detroit began 
to arrive. They were brought to the door by policemen 
who had opened a passage for them through the crowd. 


290 Mystery Mountain 

The story of the Old Man of the Mountain was the 
biggest piece of news that had broken in the entire coun¬ 
try on this particular Sunday, and the press was clamor¬ 
ing for every scrap of copy that could be collected. Every 
reporter hoped to outwit his competitor, so there was a 
feverish scramble. 

In the city newspaper offices thousands of miles away, 
editors were writing scareheads for their early morning 
editions: 

TWO TWELVE-YEAR OLD GIRLS OUTWIT 
NATION’S DETECTIVES AND 
POLICE FORCES 

For the next hour Rosemary and Betty and Claire, 
Dr. Brown, Uncle Hiram, and Aunt Polly were in a 
turmoil of intense activity. There were hundreds of 
questions to be answered and dozens of pictures to be 
taken, both inside the house and outside in the street, 
with the crowd as a background. 

The excitement became still more intense when the 
police broke a passageway through the crowd for 
Claire’s father and mother. Many of the women in the 
street wept for joy at the happy reunion of the Bruces, 
and many of the men tried to hide the tears in their eyes. 

Dr. Brown and Robert Bruce talked everything over 
confidentially with the Chief, and decided all the details 
for the future procedure. 


291 


It Ends Happily 

Then Rosemary’s father called his daughter to him 
and said, “We shall have to call a taxi this minute, and 
get back to the flying field. We’re already nearly an 
hour overdue.” 

“But, Daddy-Doc,” Rosemary pleaded, “we can’t go 
now when everything is so exciting.” 

“I’m sorry, Rosy-Posy, but I have a very important 
operation scheduled in the morning at nine o’clock!” 

“But it’s a shame we can’t stay to see things through,” 
Rosemary teased. 

“Really, there’s nothing left to do. The Chief reports 
that Craig Harding and Harriet Fairfax have already 
admitted their guilt. When they were told that we had 
discovered who Claire Bruce is, they realized that it was 
futile to deny the truth. The Bruces will remain until 
tomorrow, and take care of the legal side of the case. 
And so we must be going.” 

When Betty heard the decision, she, too, was dis¬ 
appointed. “Oh, what a shame, when everything’s so 
thrilling.” She kissed Rosemary, and as the big tears 
came, she promised to come to Chicago very soon for 
a visit. 

“How like a Brown! He would decide to go just at 
the wrong time! ” grinned Aunt Polly. “But, Rosemary, 
we’ll never forgive you if you don’t come back soon and 
make us a real visit. This one was much too short.” 


292 Mystery Mountain 

Uncle Hiram hoped that he, too, might come to Chi¬ 
cago sometime, but he didn’t know just when he could 
get away. 

Rosemary kissed Claire, too, and Claire promised to 
telephone her as soon as she arrived in Chicago so that 
they could become better acquainted. 

Robert Bruce talked quietly with Rosemary’s father 
and arranged for another meeting in Chicago at an early 
date. 

After the goodbyes were all said and the promises 
given for renewed visits, the Chief led Dr. Brown and 
Rosemary through the staring crowd and past the flash¬ 
ing cameras. 

In the midst of the crowd Rosemary was conscious of 
Tyne’s strident voice, “Goodbye, Rosemary. But we 
could just as well have done it ourselves.” 

She also heard Tad’s reply, “No, we couldn’t. Rose¬ 
mary was right, we were all afraid; but Rosemary was 
wonderful. Goodbye, Rosemary.” 

And then Hen shouted, “Tad’s right, we knew all the 
time you were wonderful. Goodbye.” And Rosemary 
shouted in reply, “Thank you, and goodbye.” 

When they were at last safe in the plane and were 
cruising back to Chicago, Rosemary had time to catch 
her breath and do a bit of thinking. 


It Ends Happily 


293 






“Aren’t people funny things!” she remarked after a 
long while. 

“Wait till you’re as old as I 
am, Rosy-Posy,” her father re¬ 
plied, “and you’ll just begin to 
find out how funny they really 























































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